Coconut Milk

As I am sure you can imagine living on a small trpical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean there are a lot of coconuts and in turn we end up using the coconut milk in a lot of our cooking. So I thought I would show you guys how they make the coconut milk, and also a good way for you to get introduced to 'my family' here in Tungua.

First if you look to the right of the picture you will see a sharp stick. That is what they use to husk the coconut (take off the outside), you can see the outside parts on the round (sorry the picture is a little dark). In the picture you are see Saane (the mother), Viliami (the youngest son), and Tevita (the son of one of the daughters).

Now that the coconut has been romoved from the shell, Viliami opens up the coconut by hitting it with the muchete to let all the coconut water out.

After all the water has been drained out the coconut it is split in half and the meat of the coconut is shaved out of the coconut. The thing that Viliami is sitting on actually has a sharp serrated blade at the end. In this picture: The woman behind Viliami is one of his sisters, Melelose, and next to her are two of her children, first Tevita and than Kulisitofa (in English David and Christopher) which is holding my dog Sinilau. The women to the left of Viliami is his oldest brother's wife. And the two children are children of two of his sisters.

Here I am helping to shave the meat of the coconut. They let me do this every once in a while but they let me this time because they said my family would like to see a picture of me doing Tongan things. =)

Once all the coconuts are done being shaved now it is time to start squeezing out the milk. From the inside of the shell of the coconut Viliami has taken out the 'coconut hair' to use like a cloth to squeeze the shaved coconut meat.

You can see him packing in the shaved coconut meat. (Sorry the picture is really dark.)

And the last step is to squeeze out the coconut milk. You can see it running down his hands. You squeeze the coconut hair with the coconut meat inside just like you would squeeze out a dish towel. Once you have squeezed the milk out from all of the shaved coconut milk you are ready to start cooking. The main use of the coconut milk is to be used like of like oil or butter when boiling the root crops or fish. Just like of adds some flavor and fat to them. I will actually use all of this coconut milk to bake the banana breads for the Fakame celebration. It is used instead of butter or oil in the baked goods. =)