Coconut Milk.

What is Coconut Milk?
Coconut milk is liquid extracted from the grated pulp of mature coconuts, and the colour is similar to cows milk, which is an opaque, milky-white.

Using Coconut Milk.
- Cooking Rice
- Cooking Curry
- Cooking Sweets
Use the fresh coconut for the cooking if you wish too, but the tin coconut milk is readily available at the markets, and I am happy enough with it.  Dried coconut powder is as good; also, it is easy to store.


Cooking, using coconut milk-based on Javanese Cooking.

Savoury Fragrant Rice.
(Nansi Gurih)
1 cup long-grain rice
1 cup of water
1 cup of coconut milk.
Fragrant Herbs
Kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass
1 teaspoon salt
Method
In a heavy-based pot, place  the rice and the water
Cook over medium heat, until the water, is almost absorbed.
Add in the coconut milk, stir together thoroughly, and continue cooking until the liquid is absorbed.
Place the lid on, reduce the heat to a lower setting, and cook for ten minutes more.
Open the lid, fluff the rice, transfer to a serving bowl.

The companion of this rice is meat, egg, vegetables, hot sambal and krupuk.

There are lots of different curries.  But here it is my cooking curry Javanese Style-Sambal Goreng Mini beef balls.

Sambal Goreng Mini Meatballs.
Susy’s Way

Ingredients.
Mini-Meatballs
500 g minced beef and one egg (optional)

Mini - Meatballs with the broth

One teaspoon salt crushed clove of garlic, ground white pepper (little)
Mix them together, and keep on mixing until the meat mixture becomes sticky and slightly firm.  Now you can make small mini meatballs (the size of an olive)
Poach these mini meatballs in stock or salted water (very little water) until cooked-hold the shape.  Keep aside together with the broth.

The Herb and Spices for the Sauce.
2 Red chilli (as much as you like)
1 Red onion or 5 shallots
5 Clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon tomato paste (for extra red colour)
(blend/crush the ingredients to make a rough paste)

Daun salam (Indonesian bay leaf) 2 leaves.
Galangal- a sliced as big as walnut- crush a little to flatten out.

Petai-fragrant bean (Indonesian)
1 large red capsicum, sliced thinly.
2 cups sliced beans or sugar peas
Vegetable oil
1 tin coconut milk – 400mill approx
1 teaspoon fish sauce (optional)

Sambal Goreng Beef Balls

Fried shallot flake to garnish.
Method
Saute the rough paste in oil until fragrant.  Add in the Daun salam, galangal.
Add in half of the coconut milk, cook to simmer
Put in the poached mini meatballs, also stir in the broth.
Continue cooking until it bubbling away.  Add in the Petai, the sliced beans and the sliced red capsicum.  Stir together, cook away for a little longer.
Now, add in the rest of the coconut milk, cook over lower heat, let it simmer and bubbling gently - blub, blub, blub.  Not too loud, to keep the coconut milk stays creamy.  Add in the fish sauce at the last minute.
Transfer to a serving bowl, and garnished with fried shallot.

The sambal Goreng should be reddish looking and creamy. The meat and vegetable cooked beautifully in the coconut milk with hot spices and herbs.

Serve with steamed white rice, garnish with krupuk udang (prawn cracker)

Variation: Sambal Goreng Ikan (Fish)
Delicious Sambal Goreng Fish for Dinner.  One of the varieties of sambal goreng.  You need an extra ingredient for it, small fresh ginger to be added-shredded or crushed.

And here are the pictures of cooking it.
Barramundi in the hot spicy sauce.

Simply add the fresh diced fish in the hot spicy coconut milk sauce, until it's cooked.  You do not need to cook the fish before adding to the sauce.

Serving and Tasting

Cooking Sweets with coconut milk.

Poached banana in coconut milk
A cup of sliced lady's finger bananas
1/2 cup brown sugar or grated coconut sugar
1 cinnamon stick, 2 cloves, and Daun pandan
1/2 cup coconut milk
Place the coconut milk, sugar and the spices, cook over low heat, bring to simmer
Put in the banana, and continue cooking for five minutes into the gentle simmer
Transfer in a small bowl to serve.  To refresh, drop some fresh coconut milk before eating.

Wajik Nongko-Sweet Steamed Rice Cake with Jackfruit.




To Be Continued

Susy