Good morning, all from a sunny and blue-skied North East coast ofEngland! Another entry from KD2:
February 27
Coconut cream
Oneof the reasons I have stayed put for more than a decade is because of the way this house floods with light in the mornings. Softened by closed blinds, the sun that comes in from the east wakes you gently, if a little earlier than you would like. This morning, the rooms fill with honeyed light, like a Hammershoi painting. I suddenly realise how much I have missed it these last few weeks.
Sunlight, even on a relatively cold day, has a habit of changing my appetite. Pasta, potatoes and grains feel inappropriate and heavy. The brown food that has provided so much homely comfort on the grey days since the year's start suddenly looks out of place.
Coconutis one of those ingredients that tend to go hand in hand with sunshine. It smacks, albeit softly of trips to Kerala and Thailand, of tiny scented pancakes for breakfast on sun-filled terraces, of lime juice and chilies and, of course, sun tan oil. All of which is about as far as you can get from a February day within a ball's throw of Arsenal Stadium.
I met coconut first in the form of a neat, sweet Bounty bar, and as a coating along with raspberry jam, for the tiny, Castle shaped sponges wr wrongky call madelines. Later it became the principal Seasoning of a holiday in Goa, and then, a decade on, of the deep, pale-green soups of Thailand. For an ingredient I am not particularly fond of, the flesh of the coconut is laden with happy memories.
The finely dessicated coconut that covered my childhood like snowflakes, on everything from jelly mushrooms to fairy cakes and marshmallows, has never set foot in my adult kitchen. It is a flavour I seem to have left behind, like a school blaze that no longer fits. I keep coconut in two forms: as a creamy, brilliant-white milk for soups and curries, and as coconut cream.
Pic: Chicken wings with coconut cream