A couple weeks ago I bought the most recent copy of the Food Network Magazine (which I buy on a regular basis) to get some new food ideas. Let me just say that this time it really paid off. As I was flipping through the pages I can across a section entitled The Coconut Handbook. This handbook explained how to tap the coconut for water, crack it open, and harvest the flesh. It also included a few recipes showing you what you could use the different parts of the coconut for. One such recipe was Coconut Rice which really sparked my interest, I mean something other than boring ole white rice that's just as simple to make, how could you go wrong.
Coconut Rice
2 cups coconut water/milk
1 cup rice
1 tbs butter
salt & pepper to taste
This is made exactly the same way as regular white rice.
So a day or two after I found this recipe I went out to Meijer to go grocery shopping and made sure I picked up a coconut to try my hand at making the rice. That night I made the rice and thought it was extremely good but all I had to go with it was boring ole chicken (grilled) and that just wouldn't do. So I spent the next couple days surfing the web for something to go with the rice. Most of what I found were recipes from Thai or Indian dishes and that wasn't really what I was looking for so I kept surfing. Eventually I stumbled across the blog Heidikins.com which had a recipe called Aloha Chicken with Coconut Rice (here is the link to the recipe http://heidikins.com/2008/08/23/whippin-it-again-aloha-chicken-with-coconut-rice/). Like the coconut rice this dish really caught my attention, so once again it was back to Meijer to pick up the few missing ingredients that I needed to try this recipe. The only change that I made was I used a fresh pineapple instead of canned and I used a fresh coconut instead of canned. Once I got home from work that day I washed up some dishes then immediately began marking this dish. It was extremely simple to do and the only trouble I had was cutting up the fresh pineapple because it was the first time I had ever worked with one. About an hour later (mine didn't take as long as the recipe said because I only made 1 piece of chicken) I popped in a movie and sat down to enjoy my dinner. The anticipation of trying this was killing me so I quickly took my first bite and realized that I had just found my new favorite meal (sorry steak). Needless to say I finished the rest of it way to fast and was left wanting more. I strongly recommend that you try this recipe yourself and if you are trying to save time when making this you can buy the canned coconut milk and canned pineapple instead of using fresh and it should taste just as good. I made this a second time a few days latter and used canned coconut milk instead of fresh and the rice tasted just as delicious (I haven't used canned pineapple at all though).
If you do try this I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and as always, May the force be with you.
Dylan
