Milking a Coconut and Making Ice Cream

Years before I ever suspected we were going to one day become expatriates ourselves, I devoured David Lebovitz's book, The Sweet Life in Paris, about his adventures as a well-known American pastry chef moving to a city renowned for its food scene. Afterwards, I came away thinking that a) living abroad might be fun; and b) I am too gauche to live in Paris. I still bop around Lebovitz's food blog, so I can continue daydreaming about food and European expat life. One day, I stumbled upon a Quick Coconut Ice Cream recipe that had "make this" written all over it.

When I move back to America, I think one thing I'll miss is fresh coconut milk. It really lends such a fabulous flavor to curries (I recommend Thai Choice Yellow Curry Paste) and, as I discovered, ice cream. Many wet markets here make coconut milk fresh every day, and a ¼ cup costs about US$0.30. The 4-person stand pictured below does very brisk business.

Step 1:
Cut coconuts in half with big, scary knife.



 

Step 2:
Hold coconut half against rotating grinder wheel to take off outer brown husk.

Step 3:
Throw coconut into top of machine where it goes through the shredder and drops into a big tub.

Step 4:
Gather shredded coconut into a muslin cloth or cheesecloth and bring it over to the press.

Man gathers shredded coconut in muslin cloth

Step 5:
The press squeezes down on the bag, and the coconut milk drips out into a bucket.

Step 6:
Transfer the coconut milk from the bucket to a pitcher for easy dispensing into plastic bags tied closed with a rubber band.

Fresh coconut milk

When I move back to Austin (hometown of Whole Foods Market), I suppose I'll have to just get used to buying this instead.

Not-as-fresh Coconut Milk

While I was at the wet market, I also stopped by the baking stall to pick up a package of Gula Melaka (Palm Sugar made from boiled down palm tree sap) to act as the sweetener. Before making the ice cream, I had to chop the disk into fine chunks just to speed up the process of dissolving it in the hot coconut milk.

Gula Melaka (Palm Sugar)

Palm Sugar is a a little hard to find in America, but I did see it on the shelves of the International Foods aisle at Whole Foods. A Indian or Asian market may be another source.

This Palm Sugar is much more expensive than buying it from the wet market in Malaysia.

The ice cream I made was fantastic. (The recipe is at the bottom of this post.) The tropical flavor of the coconut and the deep richness of the palm sugar had me practically licking the custard before it was cool enough not to burn my tongue. Waiting for it to chill and throw in the ice cream maker was torture. It's vegan, too, if you care about that sort of thing. I would show you a picture, but I ate it all before I could whip out my camera.

I realize that not everyone has the time to source exotic ingredients or the equipment to churn their own ice cream. Luckily, I found a place in Austin, Texas where you can get your fix. Lick Ice Cream on South Lamar makes small batch, organic ice cream using local ingredients (except for the coconut, I assume). There were three vegan coconut flavors on the menu the day we visited. For their Fresh Mint and Chocolate Chunk ice cream, I swear that they must steep fresh mint leaves in hot cream to capture that incredibly bright flavor. No peppermint extract here. A word of warning though — while my palate was delighted with the artisanal flavors, my kids were less enthralled. I think they were wishing for candy crush-ins.

Lick Honest Ice Cream — Creamy goodness in every bite

Artisanal flavors

COCONUT ICE CREAM
adapted from David Lebovitz (who adapted it from Delicious Days by Nicole Stich)
⅔ cup (160 ml) heavy cream
1 cup (250 ml) coconut milk
2 ounces (60 g) palm sugar, or ¼ cup white or unrefined cane sugar ("normal" granulated sugar)

In a medium-sized saucepan, bring all the ingredients to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and chill the mixture thoroughly. Once chilled, freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. Makes about 1 pint.


Related Post
I Scream!!

This post is part of Friday Daydreamin' at R We There Yet Mom? and Foodie Tuesday on Inside Journeys.

I Scream!!

I scream,
You scream,
We all scream
For...
          Ais Krim

Did you know that you can speak Malay? "Ais Krim" is the Malay word for "ice cream." Both phrases are pronounced exactly the same way.

Penang is the land of perpetual summer. Every day feels like a hot, humid July morning in Houston. Cooling off with a scoop of ice cream always seems like a good idea.

Anyways, store bought ice cream is — how shall I put it? — really, really bad here in Malaysia. Sure, you can go out for Baskin Robbins and Haagen Dazs, but most of the stuff at the grocery store is simply awful or ridiculously expensive. A pint of Haagen Dazs costs about US$10. With my family of five, we would demolish that in one sitting.

Affordable but yucky

For a while, I kept trying different brands, figuring that one of them had to be decent. The flavors always seem off unless I go with something purposely artificial like Cotton Candy ice cream. The mouthfeel is usually waxy and greasy. (Those two words never seem to pop up in ice cream ads.) When I looked at the ingredients, almost all of them have some sort of fat such as palm oil as a primary ingredient. You know, because lactating cows are great sources of palm oil.

The worst offender has to be Cremo from Thailand. I scooped it into a bowl and left it out on my 86F balcony.

Freshly scooped

Unchanged after 12 minutes in the heat. How is that possible?

4 hours later - Solids sitting in a yellowish puddle. Ewwwww!

That's a little scary if you ask me. I guess that's what happens when Water is the first ingredient on the list.

Luckily, someone clued me in to the horrible situation before I moved over here, and I made sure to include an ice cream maker in my sea shipment. This person also claimed that bringing homemade ice cream to parties would increase my social standing, but none of it has made it out of the apartment so far. As soon as my shipment arrived, I got it cranking.

First up was the custard-based Vanilla Ice Cream by Alton Brown utilizing the vanilla beans I had scored during my visit to the Tropical Spice Garden. Half-and-half is non-existent here, so I had to figure out a good sub for it (equal portions partly skimmed milk and heavy whipping cream, if you're interested). After I found pasteurized eggs, I started going through my Ben & Jerry's recipes. The lack of unsweetened chocolate on the island sent me perusing the internet for a good Chocolate Ice Cream recipe that called for unsweetened cocoa powder which is readily available.

Fast forward to last week, when I found myself with an hour to kill before picking up the kids from school. I remembered that I had brought along a tin of Godiva Chocolatier Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa mix from the Starbucks at Barnes and Noble when I moved. (If this had existed when Ma Ingalls left the Big Woods for the prairie, she would have made room for it in the wagon.) Wouldn't that make best Chocolate Ice Cream EVER??? This is what happens when I get bored. Some people dedicate themselves to Occupying Wall Street. I spend my time obsessing about ice cream.

Godiva Dark Chocolate Ice Cream
(Ais Krim Coklat Hitam Godiva)

⅔ cup Godiva Chocolatier Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa Mix*
⅓ cup granulated sugar
3 egg yolks, beaten
2⅔ cups heavy whipping cream**
 ⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips (I recommend Guittard)

In a large bowl, stir together cocoa mix and sugar. Add cream a little at a time while whisking. Add in beaten egg yolks and whisk until everything is well combined.

Pour into frozen ice cream maker canister and follow manufacturer's directions.

While mixture is churning, chop chocolate chips into smaller pieces. When ice cream is finished churning, transfer it into storage container and mix in the chopped chocolate chips. Allow ice cream to harden in the freezer.

* If you're one of those rare people who don't have a tin of Godiva Cocoa Mix handy, use ⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa and increase the sugar to ⅔ cup total.

** Do you want to make this ice cream less awesome artery-clogging rich? Use ⅔ cup whole milk and only 2 cups heaving whipping cream.

Mom's-in-a-Good-Mood suggestion: Bake chocolate chip cookies and make an ice cream sandwich with this concoction. Heaven!

Spice Girls

One of the things Andrew really misses is vanilla extract. I've found vanilla essence and vanilla paste, but he claims that only extract will do. The first week that the kids were in school, my friend and fellow Austinite, Sally, invited me to join her exploring the Tropical Spice Garden. Ah, the perfect place to pick up some vanilla beans to make my own extract. After dropping off the kids, I ran into my new friend, Meredith, and convinced her to come along.

Yoga Spice, Nice Spice and Mommy Spice

Back in the States, one of my favorite catalogs and stores is Penzey's Spices. They have an amazing selection and an encyclopedic listing of all the varieties of various spices and herbs. Sometimes, they'll have pictures from around the world of the plants being grown and harvested. Well, strolling through the Tropical Spice Garden felt like walking into the pages of a Penzeys catalog. If you're a fan of The Amazing Race, you may recognize this as the place where they had the tea challenge last spring.

When we arrived at the gardens, they spritzed us with a little citronella oil to help ward off the hungry mosquitos that roam the jungle. And aren't we in luck? They happen to sell it at the gift shop, too. The guide led our little group through the wooded paths, stopping often to educate us about the spice plants surrounding us. He'd pick leaves for us to nibble on such as the sweet tasting Stevia plant and hold up various nuts and tubers while explaining their culinary and medicinal uses. We even saw the betel nut tree that gave Penang its name.

Ceylon Cinnamon

Here's the bark of a Ceylon Cinnamon tree. Shhh... don't tell it that, thanks to Penzeys, I've figured out that I actually prefer Vietnamese Cinnamon.

Botany Quiz: Can you identify this plant?

Vanilla! I was actually a little bummed that it wasn't in bloom, and I couldn't witness the bean growing on this large orchid plant.

I just love how these leaves are waiting to unfurl.

And I'm always a sucker for water lilies.

At the end of our tour, we made our way to the gift shop. Apothecary jars and bins filled with spices and herbs surrounded us. There were also a number of gorgeous handicrafts and cookbooks. I may return to buy some gifts before I travel back stateside. I purchased some vanilla beans, but alas, they were grown in Bali instead of in the garden we had just visited.

On my future To-Do list: Take one of the cooking classes and enjoy a relaxing meal at The Tree Monkey restaurant adjoining the gardens.

Vanilla Extract Recipe roughly based on Martha Stewart's version

1. Go to tropical island and purchase Vanilla Beans plus some vaguely Russian sounding vodka. I used 4 vanilla beans for a 350 ml bottle.

2. Split beans and put into bottle.

3. Download either The Car's "Shake it Up" or Metro Station's "Shake It" to your iPod and ...

4. Store it in a dark place for 2 months, shaking it weekly, and voila Vanilla Extract.

This post is part of Foodie Tuesday on Inside Journeys. Check it out for more delicious inspiration.