What I Ate Today

In preparation for a dinner party we held, we headed to the local Indian shops for ingredients for our largely Atul Kochhar based menu. Jenny and I had been having some debate about whether to opt for fresh coconut as Atul always lists in his ingredients, or dessicated coconut. Eventually I convinced her to let me get a fresh coconut.

So we’ve got our coconut sat at home when she casually mentions that she needs the coconut in 10 minutes. Not having really thought about it since we bought it, how do I actually get into a Coconut? I told her I was planning to get my hammer ready. In a horrified look she asked me why not use a knife – she knows I always look for any excuse to use my hammer. I was skeptical whether our semi-blunt kitchen knife would cut it in the same way as we watched the guys in Indian break into the tender coconuts with their machetes. As always, Google is my friend. It took me to howtoopenacoconut.com.

I quickly assembled the right tools – coconut, hammer, towel and a couple of screwdrivers (I didn’t have any sturdy enough looking nails). The towel is handy for collecting up the pieces and any possible leakage as well as providing a bit of grip. The first step was to drain the juice from the coconut by making a couple of small holes.

The weak points apparently are the dark eyes one end of the nut. It’s best to place the towel on a carpeted floor – you’re going to be doing some serious bashing so the work surface might not be sturdy enough, wooden floors and lino could dent too. We actually found that it’s easier with two people – one to bravely hold whilst the other hits, needless to say, I got to do the hitting. I found the Phillips head screwdriver worked fine with minimal effort.

With the eyes poked in, you drain the juice. Note – this juice is not the same as coconut milk (as you can probably see from the picture). Coconut milk is derived from straining the coconut meat itself.

On the website, the method they said to open to coconut involved wrapping it in the towel and smashing it. It didn’t work in our case – one solid coconut. Instead, as I’ve seen on some coconuts, I created score marks with my Stanley knife. Rather than using the claw end of the hammer along the scored line as the website alternatively suggested, I opted for the flathead screwdriver to provide greater precision (a chisel would be more suitable). This worked great. A few goes along the line and it could be easily separated.

I found most of the coconut meat easily separated from the main shell, however some bits required a bit more force. A dull knife would me more suitable than your fingers, you could easily cut yourself.

Once you’ve removed the main shell, the meat still has a thin layer of shell attached to it. I found it really easy to remove with a knife. You could probably use a peeler instead if it’s sturdy and sharp enough.

With the shell completely removed, we were left with pure coconut meat. The age of the coconut probably dictates what their best used for. I didn’t find the juice of the mature coconut that nice compared to tender coconuts so I used it for keeping some of the meat fresh. The meat too, was fairly firm so seemed more suited to grating and toasting.

Apparently, if you shred/grate and dehydrate them they can last for 6-12 months. We kept ours in the fridge for a few days.