Iron Chef: More from the Coconut Battle

Apart from the abysmal fail of my coconut yoghurt, I also contributed coconut tartlet thingies and a coconutty salad. The salad was thrown together crunchy salad vegetables with dessicated coconut mixed through; the dressing was coconut milk, sweet chilli sauce, pepper, lemon juice and mint. I sadly could not find fresh mint which greatly detracted from the awesomeness of this dressing – but really it is delicious. It’s a good one for purple cabbage, corn, capsicum – anything sweet and crunchy. I’m a big fan of this dish but as GF says, “you can’t make friends with salad” so I made up afore mentioned tartlet thingies, as well.

A while ago I allowed temptation and pretty pictures to get the better of me, and I purchased Lynda Stoner’s book “Now Vegan”. It is a beautifully laid out book, and although there are not pictures for every single recipe, the spacious formatting makes even the text look delicious. My one major criticism of the recipes is that many of them contain “substitutes” – vegan cheese, fake meat and so forth – products which I consider a bit dubious. Some of them are edible but pretty void of nutrition; others are just plain dirty. But they don’t represent major ingredients in the recipes, and most of the meals in this book are glorious.

The “Autumn Pasta” jumped out at me when I was looking for something coconutty – I’ve never tried miso before, so I thought it would be a fun one to try. I ditched the pasta and used home-made coconut pastry cases instead. I also changed her “1 tablespoon” of cashew paste to “1/2 cup” of cashew paste – this was a mistake due to my previously stated idiocy and ineptitude. However, I think it worked out better this way; it made the sauce thicker and therefore more appropriate as a pastry filling.

Coconut, Miso & Other Stuff Pastry Thingies

• 400ml coconut cream (happily exactly one can of the organic variety I buy)
• Cup of Cashews
• Cup of (soy) milk
• 1 dessertspoon Miso paste
• 1 dessertspoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 dessertspoons sesame oil
• Clove chopped garlic
• Small onion
• Cup of mushrooms
• Lots of fresh basil
• Chilli, to taste
  
  
  not cooked yet!
  

1. Cook the onion, chilli, garlic and mushroom in the sesame oil on a gentle heat until everything has shrunk and softened and smells delicious.
   
2. Meanwhile, make cashew paste by combining your milk and the cashews in a food processor.
3. Add the cashew paste and other liquids to the mushrooms and stir. The miso I used was a hard block so it took a long time and a lot of stirring for it to dissolve into the mixture.
   
4. Lastly add big handfuls of shredded basil.

Now the sauce is complete – set it aside to cool, while you make the pastry. You will need:

• 1 can of coconut cream
• No-Egg (a powdered egg substitute)
• 2 cups Flour

1. Put the can of coconut cream into the fridge. The idea is for the cream to solidify and become as hard as possible. When the cream is ready, it should be the consistency of margarine. There will probably be a layer of this cream in the can, and beneath that the watery juice.
   
2. Use clean hands to scoop out just the harder cream, and rub this into the flour to make a bread-crum consistency.
3. The “no-egg” stuff is usually made with water; use the left over coconut juices instead. Combine this with the flower mixture and stir into a bowl. You’ll have to start using your hands after a while. If you need more liquid use more coconut cream or water. The dough should only just be keeping together at this stage, so don’t add too much liquid.
   
4. Knead on a clean floured surface for a few minutes (5 maybe?) until it is smooth and pastry like. Because the consistency of the coconut is key, if your hands are warm, you’ll probably need to do all this in steps, returning the mixture to the fridge periodically to keep the cream cold. I only had to use the fridge once, because our kitchen is in Canberra.
   
   
   
5. Roll out the pastry with a rolling pin – make it as thick or thin as you like – and cut it into circles. Mould these circles into a greased muffin tin.
   
6. Cook on 200 degrees for about ten minutes to harden the shells up – check them, however, to prevent them over cooking. Remove the cases from the tin and allow them to cool a bit.
   

For the final part of this concoction, spoon the sauce into your cases, put them on a tray, sprinkle desiccated coconut on top, and zap them in the oven. I used 200 degrees for ten minutes then 150 degrees for a further fifteen, but it depends on your oven – you basically just want to heat up and crisp your goodies.

What Others Brought

I have just moved house! That’s right: I finally have a brand new Cardboard Kitchen – complete with lime green bench top and four working hot plates. More on this later. Due to limited time and even more limited internet connectivity, updates have been and will continue to be sporadic. Here’s the recipes for my friend’s contributions to the Iron Chef Coconut battle, to keep you busy in the meantime:

Iron Chef Queanbeyan brought Coconut Fondue: we skewered cut fruit, then dipped this into a gorgeous sweet coconut concoction which was kept melty and warm in a dish supported by a hollowed out pineapple with a tea-light inside. This delicious skewer was then rolled into toasted coconut and consumed with joyous gobbling noises. Iron Chef Queanbeyan supplies the following instructions:

"Well I reckon you can probably work out how to cut fruit and toast coconut with a bit of cinnamon in :-). The cream I made up as I went along but the process was something like:

Put 2 tbsp of cornflower in a pot and mix with coconut water until you get a thin paste, stir in a can of coconut cream until smooth. Place over medium heat and stir until it starts to thicken slightly and set aside.

Peel a custard apple and cut in to small pieces. Using a food processor or bamix process for about 2 seconds only. This is just to loosen the seeds so you can go through and pick them out. Once you've removed the seeds process it to a goo and sieve the goo in to the pot, pushing it through with the back of a spoon. I also added a few spoonfuls of the goo from inside the sieve for a bit of texture. Finely dice about half a cup of fresh coconut flesh and add that to the pot too.

Stick back on a low heat, stirring continuously while you grate in 2 sticks of palm sugar. Depending on the sweetness at this stage (which depends on the sweetness of the custard apple) you might want to also stir through about a teaspoon of glucose.

Keep stirring until you reach the required consistency, using more coconut water or coconut milk to loosen if needed.

For the record, the fruits which I found worked well were banana, strawberry, rock mellon, persimmon and pineapple. Red tamarillo also is very tasty but impossible to get to stay on a fondue fork!"

Iron Chef Perth brought a coconut and a bendy blue straw. Here is her recipe:

"Step 1: Fail
Step 2: ??
Step 3:Profit
Step 4: Slight panic
Step 5: Discover coconut innocently sitting on kitchen table
Step 6: Rifle through drawers to find a straw
Step 7: Nick above coconut and straw

If you follow the above steps exactly you should have a most tasty cop out."

The Iron Chef previously known as Iron Chef Hackett brought an amazing sticky black rice pudding with coconut sauce and sweet toasted coconut. She apparently used the recipe to be found by following this link, but added the Vietnamese mint using her own initiative. It must be honestly said that the mint really makes the dish – I went back for seconds three times.

I'll upload more pictures later - I have a stupidly tiny limit to play with.