Hello my dear, Steemians, today I want to tell you about a recipe that has been in my family for many years and that we have enjoyed for a long time. According to my dad, my grandmother prepared it and he enjoyed a lot, even the wooden spoon with which he finished shaping the preserves, says my dad, who monopolized it, and tasted even the smallest portion it could contain. I refer to the Coconut preserve, it is said that the recipe dates back to the Caracas of yesteryear, when these women of African race prepared it, as a dessert, to be shared among the children of their community, and that they entertained themselves and they will let them carry out their work in the houses of the feudal lords where they were slaves.
But let's put the story aside and enter into the detail of the recipe and then the preparation.
The canned coconut is one of the easiest recipes to prepare since there are very few ingredients that are used and its preparation is relatively easy.
The Recipe
- 600 Gr, from Coco Grated
- 200 Ml of Milk
- 1 Kg of Sugar (if you do not have refined sugar, you can use brown sugar or panela failing)
- 300 Ml of coconut water.
- 300 Ml of warm water.
Yes, so short our recipe, now we will see how all this is mixed to prepare our delicious dessert.
The preparation
The coconut in its upper part, naturally has small holes that although sealed, are softer than the rest of the bark and that we can drill, to remove the water contained within the coconut, either with a nail or with any object that has both the dimensions and the necessary edge, to drill these holes, the water that we get from inside the coconut or milk is reserved separately.
The first thing is to break the bark so that the pulp is exposed, this is a process that is a bit complicate because you need to break as I said this hard bark using force, and when I say using force I mean, hit the coconut with a hammer.
After we have exposed, the pulp of the coconut, we can finally begin to remove the pulp from the bark, to do this we will use a spoon or a knife, it should be noted, that we must in this part of the process be very careful, if it is that we remove the pulp with a knife.
After we have all the pulp separated from the bark, with a knife and very carefully, we cut the coconut into smaller pieces, this in order to make them easier to handle, at the time of grating.
The pulp should be cut into pieces of approximately 4 cm, to be able to grate them comfortably, after they are cut and reserved they should look like this.
The next part of the preparations if you want is the most tedious, since it requires special care when grating each piece of pulp that we have previously cut, to avoid hurting our fingers.
Then the coconut is grated and the rest of the ingredients are heavy and separated; place over medium heat preferably a thick bottom pot, (to avoid sticking and burn) and we will mix the ingredients as follows:
The first thing is to put 300 Ml of coconut water, 30 Ml of water, stir with a wooden spoon or a palette, a few minutes later add the grated coconut and then the sugar, little by little and go stirring , then we have added half of the kilo of sugar ready for the recipe, let it boil over the kitchen without stopping stirring with the palette, until the lumps of sugar are not visible, the process after the coconut is over fire it is repetitive, you have to stir and stir, and remove the coconut from the bottom of the pot and keep doing it over and over again.
We will begin to notice that the mixture in the pot every time is getting more and more thick, and viscous, that is normal and it is what we want, we must be vigilant, because we do not want it to burn, when the mixture begins to take this thick consistency, it is time to add the remaining sugar and 200 Ml of milk, milk will give that particular and creamy flavor along with the rich coconut flavor.
Vamos a notar que en el fondo de la olla ya no queda liquido y que la mezcla esta mas pesada por la viscosidad, que a causado el almíbar, que se a venido formando, este es el momento de bajar el fuego y dejar por 10 minutos mas sin dejar de mover con la paleta. ATENCIÓN, ESTE PASO ES MUY IMPORTANTE, NO PODEMOS PERMITIR QUE LA MEZCLA SE ENFRÍE, PORQUE SE ENDURECERÍA Y PERDERÍAMOS LA OPORTUNIDAD DE HACER LAS CONSERVAS.
And this my dear Steemians, is the result of our effort, some delicious coconut preserves or cocadas, they have no comparison, their flavor is exquisite, their texture is unmatched.
I invite you to cheer up and do it at home, as you have seen the process is very easy and the ingredients are not so difficult to find, I hope my friends liked this post, I invite you to leave your comments, without further ado, I am very grateful to those who have dedicated their time to read my contribution.
The photos were taken with my phone, Vetelca Caribe 4.
@daylen