Cuckoo for Coconuts!

I recently spent a few days in Miami, where I walked around in amazement at all the tropical fruits growing just about everywhere. You know those quintessential "Florida" images, with the white sand and crystal-clear waters, surrounded by palm trees? Well, look closely--they're not just palm trees, most of them are actually coconut or mango trees, and the fruit is everywhere! I'd never seen so many coconuts as I did walking along South Beach--a homeless guy gathered up all the ones that had fallen naturally to the ground in the area and was selling them to tourists for a few bucks a piece--he would drill a hole and stick a straw into them so you could drink the sweet, refreshing water. Trees along the city's highways, sidewalks and basically any area with landscaping are dotted with green coconuts and orange mangos--I can't imagine going hungry in Miami! With so many fresh fruits growing around, what stops people from just pulling it down? (Apparently, nothing, as evidenced by South Beach's smartest homeless guy!)

At Robert Is Here, a fruit stand on the way to the south entrance of the Everglades that is famous for its tropical fruit milkshakes, I came across all kinds of tropical fruits, including many that I'd never even heard of, like mamey, black sapote and jackfruit. However, I was most enamored with the coconuts.

As a child, I was in awe of these strange, hard fruits (are they fruits?) and became even more delighted by them after my mother told me that they had milk on the inside. Assuming that it was like cow's milk, I made a beeline towards them every time we went to the grocery store, and I would stand there listening to the "milk" sloshing around inside as I shook them, and trying to figure out which one had the most milk and how it got there. My parents would never buy them for me, and now I know why--you have to drill a hole into them to get the juice out, and then whack away the husk with a machete. At Robert Is Here, however, any employee can drill into or chop open your coconut free of charge! My friend Franco's parents were kind enough to buy both a green and a brown coconut for me to try, and I happily sat in the backseat of their car sipping the juice out of them on the way to the Everglades. At home that evening, when I appeared from the bathroom after washing my face, Franco was waiting excitedly for me in the living room. "Want to watch my dad chop open the coconuts with a machete?" he asked. You bet! The green coconut wasn't ripe enough to eat, but I gobbled up the brown one's meat, which was delicious with some sugar sprinkled on it. Eating raw coconut is nothing like eating the sweetened coconut flakes that can be found in the baking aisle at the grocery store, (which I happen to be doing right now) it's much harder, and I'm talking so hard you're not even sure if it's safe to eat. However, there are all sorts of supposed health benefits to consuming coconut, and they are said to especially aid in digestion, which, as someone who suffers from IBS, I am particularly happy to hear. (Please, though, don't use me as a reliable source for nutritional information--or information of any kind, for that matter. I just believe whatever I read on the internet, the parts I can remember, at least, and then pompously inform people at parties that "I've conducted extensive research on [insert topic here]" and that your opinion is wrong.)

In addition to raw coconut and coconut flakes, I am also a fan of coconut milk, though it's one of those things I really, really have to be in the mood for. I find that it can add a delicious and complex taste to curries, but that it can also have a shocking, almost offensive taste if you're not expecting sweet with your spicy. I once traded dinners with a friend at the New York City's Klong because I couldn't face the coconut milk in whatever it was that I'd ordered. Anyway, today was one of those days that I just felt, well, cuckoo for coconuts! Enough so, at least, to give Green Curry Chicken another shot.

When cooking a new dish, or, in this case, a dish that I've screwed up before, I compare several different recipes to find the one I like best, and then try to follow it as closely as I can. However, there are times when dragging myself to the grocery store to collect a very specific list of ingredients (which, if you're cooking Thai food, will always include the elusive Keffir Lime Leaves) is just not an option. Fortunately, my parents keep the house well stocked, and by that I don't just mean that we have a case of chicken broth and some frozen dinners--we could literally feed a small army with what we have stocked in the pantry and freezer. In fact, just the other day, I "went shopping" in the freezer and found, among other things, a pound each of cod fillets, flounder and mahi mahi, 2 pounds of frozen mango slices, mixed berries, four pounds of butter, a couple of frozen dinners, some salmon patties, frozen burgers, a couple of pounds of coffee, a jar of yeast, 3 bags of coconut flakes and a couple of jars of my dad's homemade barbeque sauce...see what I mean? I can usually bake breads and cookies or make a pretty extensive meal without once setting foot out of the house, and sometimes it does just seem ridiculous to bring in more food when I know I should work with what I have. This guilt, combined with my desire to not spend more money on food than we already have and to stay out of the busy grocery store left me with one option--to tailor the recipe to include the ingredients that I already had and find substitutes for ones that I didn't have.

The recipes I've encountered for Green Curry Chicken all seem either far too complex or far too simple--one from a Thai cookbook I recently made came out annoyingly bland, so this time, I used a combination of the recipe on the back of a jar of Thai Kitchen Green Curry Paste and Darlene Schmidt's "Easy Green Curry Chicken." The results were fabulous.

1 can coconut milk*
2 tbsp green curry paste
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp brown sugar, or to taste
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup grated coconut
3 chicken breasts, chopped into 2-3 inch pieces
Vegetables to taste, I would recommend bean sprouts, scallions, peas, water chestnut, shiitake mushrooms, shredded carrots...
1 cup basil, or to taste
(All of the recipes you will find call for Keffir Lime Leaves, but I've never been able to find any, and that's not to say I haven't tried--I once spent an afternoon in New York City's Chinatown going from grocery store to grocery store, asking for them. They're in the curry paste, though, so I'm not too worried about it If you can find fresh ones, use about 4, chopped.)

Saute the green curry paste in the coconut milk on medium for about five minutes, then add the onion, garlic, coriander, brown sugar, Thai fish sauce and lime juice. Let simmer until it just begins to boil, and then stir in the broth. Add the chicken and shredded coconut, and cook until done. Add the vegetables with the raw chicken or just before it's done, depending on how crunchy you like them. If you like them soft, saute them in a separate pan and add at the end--the vegetable juices change the flavor of the coconut milk. Just before serving, stir in the basil--authentic recipes will call for Thai basil, but it can't really be found outside of Asian grocery stores and regular basil works just fine.

*An important note, when buying coconut milk, stick to Goya or Thai Kitchen brands--I made this recipe a second time using all the same ingredients, but a different brand of coconut milk, and it was awful--stank up the whole kitchen!