How to make coconut milk

Coming from the States, I had only ever seen coconut milk in a can. As it turns out, coconut milk comes not only from cans, but from coconuts! Our lovely maid/cook, Kimbole, went to her home village over spring break and brought us some coconuts to show us how it's done.

First, you need a korani, a long metal instrument with short spikes on the end for shredding the coconut. It normally goes on the ground and is stabilized with a foot, with the person using it in a squatting position, but Kimbole demonstrated on the counter. (Actually, she had already done the work of shredding the coconuts by the time I showed up with a camera, so consider this a dramatic re-enactment of the events.)

This is from two coconuts. She used half of it for coconut milk and says that she will use the other half for payesh, a sweet Indian rice pudding.

The coconut goes in a pot on the stove with some water -- Kimbole used about two cups of coconut and about one cup of water -- until it is hot but not boiling. She then removed it from the heat, set it aside for about 20 minutes, and strained out the coconut. Voila! The result was coconut milk. She threw the cooked coconut away, but said that it could also be saved to use for cleaning. Apparently you can make a paste out of it, and it is good for scrubbing, especially for cleaning up grease and oil. Finally, she used the coconut milk to make a vegetable curry for our dinner. Yum!