Didn't feel like typical dinner, so decided on a bunch of random stuff to snack on. Got back from shop, set it all out, and... coconut, cider, cheese, chicken, crackers... Then spent a while thinking whether I should add some carrots and cucumbers to the pile. (And of course this page exists.)
This coconut, by the way, was a special experience - not the mature brown hard shelled one we typically imagine and have to hammer into bits with great difficulty to get at anything edible, but a "young" one. In those perhaps only about half of the inner liquid endosperm has (sort of) solidified into the normal coconut "meat", the rest is still in liquid form and super tasty! Today's version was sold with the outermost green layer chopped off, the fibrous white coconut coir part still attached. Which means that after stabbing the nut with a metal straw and drinking the surprisingly large amount of the coconut water, it took a while of hacking to get that layer separated (it is now drying outdoors, because of course I will be using it in the garden). Some more hammering on a throwaway-grade kitchen knife and we were through the next layer - the hard brown shell - and into the generally desirable white centre, which was.. sort of a letdown. Taste was ok, but the texture was somewhere towards the slimy-jelly end of the spectrum. Somehow still kept eating it, though, and am now waiting to see whether the rumors of young coconuts having slightly laxative effects prove true or not.
Cheers,
Hedi
