In Search Of: Coconut Milk

I am planning a small splurge for Thanksgiving.  I am not going all out, mind you.  I will have a sensible low-carb breakfast, and for the afternoon dinner, I will eat some of the bird (duck in our case, because our host’s 16-year-old daughter wanted something different, and I’m always delighted to have the opportunity to teach the younger generation how to roast a duck) and whatever LC-friendly sides are offered.  I know for a fact there will be a salad, and Brussels sprouts, and maybe something else.  But as I write this entry (Tuesday night for Wednesday morning publication), my husband is in the kitchen making a cheesecake from Fran McCullough’s wonderful The Good Fat Cookbook.  Not all the recipes in this book are low-carb, but they are all veritable riots of healthy fat, and we’ve never made anything from this book that wasn’t absolutely delightful.  (Try the cabbage braised in gin and butter, or the walnuts roasted with butter and oregano., both of which are low in carbs.)

As desserts go, cheesecake and custard are the ones I pick for an occasional splurge – they are mostly fat and protein with a bit of sugar added, and home cooks can usually reduce the sugar somewhat without compromising the quality (see footnote, ha ha).  So on Thanksgiving I’m having a piece of coconut milk-ginger-macadamia cheesecake made by my husband’s loving hands.  How can you go wrong with a combination of lauric acid, butterfat, and oleic acid, anyway?

The only problem was the coconut milk.  I volunteered to shop for the ingredients.  The first store I went to, a Trader Joe’s, had only light coconut milk, which ain’t worth the trouble of opening the can.  (I blame the likes of the Center for Science in the Public Interest for the fact that it’s hard to find a can of full fat coconut milk.)  After two additional stops at local grocery stores, I had found two additional brands of light coconut milk, and two full fat brands from somewhere in the Pacific that were treated with sodium metabisulfite.  It’s at times like these that I question my car-free lifestyle.  I’d been tromping around for an hour already, and no coconut milk.  I decided it was time to go home and make dinner.

Our neighborhood Shaw’s used to carry Grace brand coconut milk, which contains nothing but coconut and water.  But it suddenly disappeared from the shelves.  Shaw’s and Whole Foods both carry a number of brands of coconut milk that contain coconut, water, and guar gum.  I don’t object to guar gum; in fact, I use it in my own kitchen.  However, I find that it ruins the texture of coconut milk, and if I can find a product without it, I use it.  But sodium metabisulfite is right out.  I don’t know what it is, and I know that Grace makes a superior coconut milk that doesn’t include it, so clearly it doesn’t do anything for the milk.  So why risk consuming it?

On my way home, I began to wonder if I was going to have to purchase whole coconuts and learn to make my own coconut milk.  I don’t think that this is difficult, provided you can get the darn thing open, but it’s time consuming.  You have to crack the thing, drain out the coconut water, pry the meat off the shell, peel off the inner brown skin, and process the stuff in a blender full of hot water two or three times.  And, given my recent prolific blogging, it may be hard to believe, but did I mention I have a full-time job?

After dinner, my husband went to the nearby Whole Foods.  I expected that, at least, he would find coconut milks without sodium metaprotohypocatabidichloroflurosulfate (or whatever it is), but he actually found one without guar, too.  It’s called Blue Mountain Country, and it bears the legend, “For that true west indian taste.”  “Interesting,” I said.  “Grace, the other brand that doesn’t have guar, is from the Caribbean, too.”  But it turns out that, by “west indian,” they mean “west of India,” i.e., Sri Lanka.

FOOTNOTE:  the cheesecake is in the oven, and we just discovered that my husband misread “3/4 cup sugar” as “1/4 cup,” so this cheesecake is going to be even more of a carb bargain than we thought.  I’m sure I’ll love it, but I hope the other dinner guests do, too.  I think we won’t tell.