Recently in Technique
That beautiful tree at left graced our driveway until the landlord realized it posed a liability problem. Coconuts bouncing down our long, steep hill could cause major damage by the time they crossed the street below at a hundred miles an hour. Rather than just pick the coconuts before they fell, his solution was to cut whole tree down. A bit like cutting your head off to avoid haircuts, if you ask me. On the bright side, we found ourselves in possession of three dozen young coconuts.
First, a quick coconut anatomy lesson. They are protected by two outer layers, a fibrous yellow-green husk around a hard brown shell. Inside the hard shell is a third layer, the meat, and then a central cavity containing watery coconut milk. The "milk" at this point is not nearly as thick or rich as the canned stuff; that takes a few additional steps after extraction. A Hawaiian riddle describes the coconut layers, ʻEkolu pā a loaʻa ka wai. He aha la ia? "Three walls to get to the water, what am I?" The answer of course is ka niu.
The younger a coconut is, the softer the meat will be, the more milky liquid it will have and the better it will be for drinking. As the coconut ages, the milk is absorbed, the meat firms and it grates more easily. Our batch was right in the middle, with plenty of milk and good flesh.
If the coconuts you buy at the supermarket are brown and hard with bits of fibrous hair, then the outer husk has already been removed. Let's assume for now that it hasn't and you're trying to figure out how to get this puppy open. These football-sized nuts are tough, able to bang around on ocean currents for thousands of miles before washing up on distant sandy shores to sprout. With proper technique though, they can be opened in just a few minutes.
Method One: A Sharp, Pointy Stick
The traditional Samoan method for husking secures a strong stick in the ground, pointy end up. They jam the coconut onto the spike and work it around until the husk falls away, then poke the stick into one of the eyes to drain the liquid. Sharp objects and I don't do well together, so this method would be a recipe for disaster. The only thing I can imagine piercing is my hand.
Method Two: A Sharp, Pointy Machete
The guys at the swap meet whittle away one end of the coconut with a machete until they can lop off the end and stick a straw in the top. Three bucks gets you one, ice cold. This method sounds promising, but again we have the sharp object problem. Whacking a hard, round object with a big knife takes practice. Besides, my machete is duller than a butter knife.
Method Three: The Best (Especially for People Who Hurt Themselves on Sharp, Pointy Things)
My preferred method for husking a coconut is far more primitive yet equally effective.
Grab a young coconut in two hands, stem end facing down. Think of something you're really pissed at, then lift the coconut to shoulder height and smack it down onto the driveway. Watch out because the nut can bounce unpredictably and leave a nasty bruise. Pick the nut up, turn it around 180 degrees so that the point is facing down this time. Embrace your inner rage and hurl it at the ground. Didn't that feel good? Repeat this process, smacking alternating ends of the coconut on the ground until the outer husk splits in several spots. Grab wedges of the outer husk and peel them away.
Now you should have a brown, hard-shelled coconut. We can do this the neat way, or the fun way. The neat way is to take a hacksaw and slice the coconut in half. Remembering my penchant for injuring myself with sharp implements, I wore heavy leather gloves while I sawed a few. It takes a while, so be patient. The only reason you'd want to hacksaw your fruit is to get two nice coconut shell bowls. (Dry them in the sun then sand them down.)
If you couldn't care less about pretty coconut bowls and just want the treasure inside, we can use the fun way: more banging. Whack the coconut against the ground again, just hard enough to crack it. Have a mixing bowl nearby and drain all the milk into it. You should then be able to work your fingers into the crack and pry the shell open. Congratulations, you're all done except for cleanup.
...now what? The milk can be strained, chilled and sipped, on it's own or mixed with other juices or rum. Scrape the meat out with a sturdy spoon and use it in recipes that call for grated coconut, or just break off chunks and chew on them. In the next few days I'll provide a recipe for thickening your own coconut milk suitable for cooking. The variations are endless.
It kinda doesn't matter what you do next. This is one of those times where the journey can be more fun than the destination... you just husked a coconut!
There's a trick to cutting mango. The key is to have a clear idea of what you want and how to get there, otherwise you'll end up with a pile of and slippery, mangled mess and disappointments. In this, mangoes are a lot like life.
Hayden mango, fist-sized.
The average mango is roughly the size of a fist with an inedible outer skin, juicy meat and a large oblong pit. The temptation is to peel it (easy enough) then start carving away at the yummy flesh until reaching the pit. DON'T DO THAT. Ripe mangoes are juicy. As soon as you get that skin off, juice will start dripping all over your hands, down your wrists, around the cutting board and making everything slippery sloppy as you hack towards the pit. Ripe mango is soft, so gripping the flesh tighter just mushes your precious fruit, aggravating the situation. If you're at all like me, you'd give up near the end and just suck on the pit to get the last bits, with juice now running down your chin as well.
Let me show you a better way...
Slicing from tip to stem... see the flat pit inside?
Stand the mango on the stem so you're looking down at the tip. See how it has an oval shape? Slice straight down along the longer direction, just off center. You'll be able to feel the flat pit as you cut. Keep the blade as close as possible to the pit all the way to the bottom. Make a second cut along the other side of the pit, so that you are left with two near-halves and a narrow disc of mostly pit and skin.
This is the cool part. Cross-hatch the flesh with the tip of the knife, taking care to cut clear down to the skin without cutting through it. Hold the mango half in your hands with your thumbs on the edges and your fingers against the skin. Press on the skin to flip the mango inside out. Check out those pretty cubes! Finally, cut the cubes away from the skin.
Maybe this technique was self-evident, but I didn't know it until I was taught. Now I pass the trick along so that you too can impress your friends and family with your mango cutting prowess. Here are a few ideas for that newly cut mango:
- The churning freezes your ice cream evenly, because the entire mixture is exposed evenly to colder temperatures.
- The churning breaks up an ice crystals that form during freezing, resulting in a smoother ice cream. The churning adds air bubbles to the ice cream, lightening the texture.
Although ice cream makers facilitate the three benefits above, there's no reason you can't do it on your own. Here's how...
Making ice cream by hand
- Pick and prepare a recipe. Several of mine are provided below.
- Transfer the mixture to a wide bowl. A larger surface area speeds up the cooling process.
- Chill the ice cream mixture thoroughly in the fridge. This may take as much as a couple hours if you've made a variety that required cooking the ingredients.
- Transfer the bowl to the freezer.
- After about half an hour, remove the bowl. The edges should be partly frozen and the middle slushy. Beat vigorously for 2-3 minutes until smooth, then return the bowl to the freezer. Keep in mind that you're helping to break up ice crystals, introduce light air bubbles and facilitate even freezing.
- Repeat step five twice more then let it sit until frozen.
Once your ice cream is finished, you'll want to eat it promptly. Nothing beats fresh ice cream, but without chemical preservatives it loses some of that homemade taste within a day or two. Eat it while it's fresh!
Recipes
→ Ginger Pineapple Sorbet
→ Green Tea Ice Cream
→ Lychee Ice Cream
→ Lychee Sorbet in Coconut Macadamia Tuiles with Papaya Coulis
→ Orange Mango Sorbet
→ Soursop Sorbet
Where do people go to get their cooking knives sharpened? I've always taken mine to PowerEdge, but the sharpener there is out of town for most of August. At this point I have soup spoons that are sharper than my chef's knife. Something must be done. What other options are there?
Yesterday I described my recipe for laulau. Just between you and I, that post was getting long enough already and I hadn't gotten to the detailed explanation for how to wrap your laulau for steaming. Too many other laulau recipes skim over this step, but we want to make sure we do it justice, eh? The wrapping is the part of the process that benefits the most from gleaning the wisdom of all the laulau makers that have come before us.
Described below are two basic methods I've been taught for wrapping laulau, which I've arbitrarily named package style and ho'okupu style. I have no idea if other people call them by other names, but I suspect it's usually just, "making laulau." If you haven't already, you'll want to read the laulau recipe. The images below aren't meant to stand apart from the main recipe.
The package style of wrapping laulau appeals to the organized and tidy side of my personality. Each laulau is well-contained with no leakage through gaps in the wrapping. The trick of splitting a single stem to use as two ties is pretty darn clever, and the resulting packages take a minimum of space in my steamer. It is effective and elegant.
Picking up where the recipe left off...
Stack four to five lu`au leaves on a flat surface, with leaf tips pointing in different directions. Place a piece of pork in the center of the leaf stack, and then a slice of fish on top. If you've decided to use the reserved lu`au stems, add a tablespoon of diced stems.
Fold the lu`au leaf to enclose the bundle, much like you would enclose a burrito or wrap.
Lay a ti leaf on your work surface and place the lua`au bundle at the tip end. It doesn't matter much if the ti leaf is shiny side up or down.
Roll the lu`au bundle from the tip end of the ti leaf to the stem end, keeping it as tightly bundled as possible. Split the stem lengthwise all the way up to where it joins the main portion of the leaf. Pull the two stem lengths around the bundle, cinch them tight, then tie them together to hold the bundle in place.
Place the tied bundle at the tip end of a second ti leaf, then roll it tightly from tip to stem end.
Split the stem of the outer leaf all the way up to where it joins the main portion of the leaf and use it to tie off the bundle. You now have a neat laulau package, ready for steaming. Return to the main recipe.
To ho`okupu is to pay a tribute to an honored person by giving a ceremonial gift. The gifts are traditionally wrapped in a ti leaf bundle that looks essentially identical to this laulau wrapping method. Although a h`okupu style for wrapping laulau is more prone to leak through gaps between the leaves and takes more space in the steamer, the resulting packages make for a better show. They appeal to the artist side of me.
Picking up where the recipe left off...
Stack four to five lu`au leaves on a flat surface, with leaf tips pointing in different directions. Place a piece of pork in the center of the leaf stack, and then a slice of fish on top. If you've decided to use the reserved lu`au stems, add a tablespoon of diced stems.
Fold the lu`au leaf to enclose the bundle, much like you would enclose a burrito or wrap.
Place the lu`au bundle in the middle of a ti leaf and bring the two ends of the ti leaf together over the top.
Add a second ti leaf, so that the two ti leaves form a "t" shape under the lu`au, and gather the ends of the ti leaves together at the top of the bundle.
Make sure the ti leaves are gathered as tightly as you can, with no gaps between the leaves where lu`au can leak out. If you have gaps, either reposition the leaves, or add a third leaf for additional coverage. Take the stem of one leaf and hook it around your thumb (to hold its position) then pull it around the gathered leaves.
Tie the stem off securely with the stem of another leaf. You now have a neat laulau package, ready for steaming. Return to the main recipe.
There you go, two different laulau wrapping techniques!
Whichever wrapping method you choose, just relax and have fun with it. If you pay attention to your ingredients and "listen" to how they respond to rolling, cinching and tying, I'm confident the end result will be pono. And delicious. Good luck!
Let's say you've read up on the amazing utility and versatility of ti leaves and are now itching to get your hands on some for a recipe. That's when it strikes you--you've never seen ti leaves for sale at the local supermarket.
The best way to get ti leaves is local style: from a friend or "uncle." They grow in people's yards or--and you didn't hear this from me--along the sides of some public roads and parks. (Mālama the plants! Don't take too much.) Look for large, outer leaves, free from major blemishes and with a healthy green color. Grab the stem near where it joins the trunk and pull downwards. Never yank sideways or upwards as this can break the plant trunk.
Most florists will also have ti leaves on hand to sell, already cleaned and ready. It's not as satistfying to buy leaves from the florist, but sometimes convenience wins out. If you live in a different state, don't worry! Banana leaves can be substituted for ti leaves without adverse effects. Check the freezer case of larger Asian supermarkets for bundles of frozen banana leaves.
Now that you have a handful of ti leaves, we need to get them ready for use. It's easiest to wash them with the stem still intact. The stems tend to be dirty and often harbor ants. Once they're all clean, we're going to "de-bone" them to make them more pliable.
Pick up a leaf (lā`i) and hold it in front of you, tip (wēlau) towards the sky and shiny side facing away. Hold your fingers against the bone (`iwi) of the leaf about 1/3 of the way up from the stem (kumu), from the back of the leaf. This sounds confusing, but look at the position of my hands in the photo and imagine where the index fingers are pressing.
Holding the leaf
Bend the leaf forward towards you to crease the bone then bend it sharply away, pushing with your fingers against the bone to cause it to snap and separate from the leaf, trying not to break through the leaf. Run your fingers down the shiny side of the bone towards the stem to cause it to separate from the leaf. It's normal to ruin a few leaves as you practice, but you'll get the knack of it.
Removing the bone
Always prep a few more leaves than you need, because a few will inevitably split or tear along the way. If you don't need every single leaf for your recipe, use the remainders as table decorations or as bedding on a serving platter. If you're not going to use your leaves right away, you can freeze them for later.
Next up: recipes for laulau and baked fish wrapped in ti leaves.
This post is a continuation of my long-neglected Hawaiian luau series.
Last week I was faced with a predicament: a ham and no plan. This was no small ham either, but twenty pounds of hickory smoked predicament waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. My plea for assistance yielded a number of promising recipes-- thank you Peter, Topher, Melissa and Reid! As I was agonizing over which recipe to choose (yes, I agonize over recipes), they started to blur together and it was then that I spotted the patterns. They weren't four different ham recipes, but one basic pattern with relatively minor differences in the implementation.
In the computer programming world, design patterns are, "standard solutions to common problems in software design... [which] can speed up the development process by providing almost ready-made solutions that have been used earlier and proved to be efficient." We're not talking about cooking by formula --this isn't a mechanical process-- but in recognizing and adapting the best efforts of those who have come before us. The same basic idea works for both programming and pork.
From the recipes proffered and a little reading on the side, I discovered that ham preparation has two main phases: the cooking, during which time we're trying to get it sufficiently hot without drying out, and the glazing, when we slather it with flavor. Most recipes are in agreement that the cooking needs to happen through wet heat, either simmering or boiling. The glazing is where the personality of a recipe shows through most clearly, containing everything from brown sugar to salsa to guava jam, each augmented with additional spices.
Breaking it down, the glazes generally all contain a sweet component as the base. It is the sugars in this base that carmelize so nicely for the glazing effect. Spices are added to give added heat and punch: cloves, nutmeg, salsa, etc. The pattern is simple: wet heat to cook, glaze with sugars, season further with hot spices. Once I recognized the pattern, I felt suddenly free to create my own recipe, riffing off a combination of all four contributions. It turned out amazingly well.
The same idea applies to most any kind of cooking. Armed with an understanding of your ingredients, what they contribute, and how they combine with other flavors, the patterns begin to emerge. Recipes turn into rules of thumb basic patterns to point you in the right direction rather than hard and fast gospel truth.
Get my Guava-Glazed Ham recipe.
My knife skills suck.
I've tried to think of a nicer way to say it, but there's no pussyfooting around this one. The defining realization was a few years ago as I was driving myself to the emergency room, blood seeping through the gauze around my hand and dripping down the steering wheel. I had been trying to carve wild boar off a leg bone when something slipped and I cut partly through the extensor tendon on my pointer finger. My wife came home while I was being treated, to discover a chef's knife half submerged in a pot of tepid stew, lights on everywhere and blood splattered across the floor. (She may never forgive me.)
After a few hours of outpatient surgery and many months of recovery, I've recovered all my finger flexibility. But the original problem remains: I'm dangerous to myself and other because I've never been properly trained in how to slice and dice my food. Proper cutting is essential to good cooking.
This tutorial explains common knife techniques as applied to common vegetables, for both right- and left-handed cooks. I've already begun putting several techniques into practice, and it makes a world of difference. Look ma! I've still got all my fingers!
[Originally found by way of the Accidental Hedonist.]
