The skinny on coconut fat

I’ve cooked for some people with pretty serious food restrictions, either by choice or because of allergies or intolerance.

It’s possible that I am now faced with my greatest challenge. I won’t lay out the full extent of it but I’ll say the list of forbidden foods is umm quite large. He’s a lovely person, however, and therefore worth the effort.

Dessert is the biggest challenge. This is a person who won’t eat flour, cow dairy, sugar or (wait for it) fruit. Not even antioxidant-rich berries, which have always been the easy solution for dinner guests with a lot of food restrictions.

He’s a pretty good sport about it, and he seems to fully own the idea that it’s his own choice to be plateless while everyone else is enjoying cakes, cookies or fresh fruit.

But it bothers me; so I figured I’d try to come up with a dessert that meets his devilishly challenging restrictions. 

Coconut: good or bad?

One of the most popular desserts that I make is the simple Italian pudding called panna cotta. I decided to try and make a sugarless version and to use coconut milk instead of cream and whole (cow) milk. 

Instead of using my usual recipe (which I cut out of The New York Times about 15 years ago), I looked online for a coconut milk version. The one I found happened to also be sugar free. 

I can tell that you’re already scratching your head and saying, “Wait, aren’t coconut products full of unhealthy fats?” The answer is yes. They are loaded with saturated fat. 

In the past few years, coconut milk and coconut oil have somehow magically transformed themselves in our minds from super-bad foods to superfoods.

An interesting article that I found online at the medical website www.statnews.com seems to explain what happened. 

A group of nutrition experts at Columbia University did a study on the health benefits of cooking with medium chain fatty acids. 

Coconut oil is partly made up of these healthy medium chain fatty acids and apparently someone picked up on this (perhaps the international union of coconut growers) and began to tout coconut as the new wonder food, capable of curing heart disease and cancer.

The scientists involved in this study seemed surprised at how their data was interpreted. They said in the www.statnews.com article that, for their study, the test subjects ate foods made with 100 percent medium chain fatty acids (and no, you can’t go out and buy those perfect medium chain fatty acids; they were custom-made for the experiment). Coconut products are 14 percent medium chain fatty acids.

The PR wheels worked so well in this case that a coconut craze started; it got widespread enough that the federal government and the American Heart Association have recently put out statements saying that a little coconut is fine but don’t eat a big spoonful of coconut oil every morning.

Moderation is key

Moderation and a little bit of this and a little bit of that is always the best way to manage your nutrition intake.

OK so back to the pudding. First, this is a really easy and truly delicious dessert (we did a taste testing at my office and it got rave reviews). 

Second, there are lots of health benefits to eating this pudding (no wheat, no sugar, no cow dairy); coconut milk might not be one of them but it’s also not horribly bad for you — just don’t start eating this pudding every day.

The recipe was adapted from one that I found online at www.savorylotus.com. The coconut milk that I used can be found at LaBonne’s in Salisbury. It comes in a foil pouch and is the Taste of Thai brand. You want a brand that (sorry) has some emulsifiers and fat, otherwise the pudding will separate. Taste of Thai is a pretty “clean” brand, but it has guar gum in it (which is an ingredient in pretty much all the ice cream you’ve ever eaten).

As a sweetener, this recipe gives you the choice of either honey or maple syrup. I chose honey because I thought it worked better with the lemon zest. Whichever you decide to use, I of course suggest that you buy one that was made here in the Tri-state region. 

My friend also does not eat honey (sigh). If you feel the same way, make this pudding without any sweetener at all; and then have honey available at the table so your guests can drizzle it on top themselves. 

I also suggest that you toast some slivered almonds and some coconut flakes in a skillet (don’t use any fats, toast them naked; and keep a close eye on them so they don’t burn). Serve the almonds and coconut on top of the pudding. 

This pudding isn’t perfectly white, as a cow dairy panna cotta might be; so the toppings actually enhance the overall presentation.

If you are vegetarian and don’t want to use regular gelatin, which is a beef byproduct, use Japanese agar agar gelatine, which you can find at some health food stores and of course online.

Coconut lemon panna cotta

Makes four servings

Adapted from
www.savorylotus.com

Two bags of Taste of Thai coconut milk (about 1 3/4 cups), 2 tablespoons of lemon zest (use a microplane grater to get tiny shavings of peel off your lemons; you’ll need two large or four small lemons to get 2 tablespoons),
1 1/2 teaspoons of powdered gelatin such as Knox (that’s half of one Knox packet), 2 tablespoons of honey (optional), 1 teaspoon of vanilla,1 cup of slivered almonds, 1 cup of coconut flakes (the unsweetened dry kind, not the wet sticky ones), honey to drizzle over the top.

Whisk together 1 cup of the coconut milk and all the lemon zest in a small, heavy pan. Put it over low heat and let it warm up for a couple minutes, just until steam begins to rise. Turn off the heat and cover the pan; the lemon zest will infuse the milk.

Pour the rest of the coconut milk into a shallow bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over the top. Leave it for 10 minutes while the gelatin sets. Once that happens, gently warm the lemon/coconut milk mixture (again, just until steam rises). Whisk the coconut milk/gelatin mixture into the coconut milk/lemon zest over low heat, until it thickens slightly.

Turn off the heat. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla (and 2 tablespoons of honey, if you want). 

Line a colander with a double layer of cheesecloth and then strain the pudding through the cheesecloth into a large bowl. Transfer the strained pudding into four small, pretty bowls. Cover them with plastic wrap and refrigerate them for three or four hours until they’ve set (treat them gently until this happens).

Toast your almond slivers and coconut flakes (separately) until they just turn brown. Let them cool.

You can keep this pudding in the refrigerator for a day or two before serving. When you remove the plastic wrap, it will leave some drops of condensation on top of the pudding; you can gently blot them off with a paper towel.

Top each bowl with some almonds and coconut. Whether or not you added honey during the cooking process, serve some honey on the side and let your guests drizzle it on top.