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SNOW COCOA-NUT (to serve with moulded jelly or jam)
Break up a cocoa-nut, pare off the brown skin, and throw the pieces of white meat into cold water for a short time. Grate these on a coarse grater, and pile the snow lightly in a glass dish.
A garnish rather than a dish: fresh coconut grated coarsely so it falls in light flakes over a turned-out jelly or a dish of jam. The whole effect depends on the coconut being freshly grated and loosely piled.
- Opening the nutPierce the softest of the three eyes with a screwdriver or skewer and drain the water first, then crack the shell with a hammer; warming the nut in a moderate oven (about 350F) for 10 to 15 minutes is said to help the flesh pull away from the shell. A whole coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups grated, far more than one dish needs.
- "Pare off the brown skin"The thin brown testa clinging to the white meat is edible but discolours the snow. A vegetable peeler takes it off cleanly once the flesh is out of the shell.
- The cold-water soakThis firms the meat and rinses off shell dust, and the pieces are easier to handle; ten to fifteen minutes answers to the recipe's "short time." Dry the pieces before grating or the snow turns sodden.
- Coarse graterUse the largest holes on a box grater, or the coarse shredding disc of a food processor. A fine grater gives a damp paste, not snow.
- Desiccated coconut is not a substituteBagged dried coconut, sweetened or not, has none of the moisture or the loose flake this depends on. Frozen grated fresh coconut, sold in South and Southeast Asian shops, is the nearest shortcut.
- TimingGrate within an hour or two of serving. Fresh coconut is high in oil and goes rancid and yellow quickly at room temperature; keep it covered in the refrigerator if you must grate ahead, and use within a day.
- ServingThe recipe piles the snow in its own glass dish; if you arrange it about a moulded jelly, keep it clear of the shape and add it at the last moment, since jelly weeps and jam bleeds into the shreds on standing.
Coconut arrived in the British larder as an imperial import, and by the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled in the late nineteenth century whole nuts had become a familiar and inexpensive commodity. Cookery writers of the period were fond of garnishes that supplied contrast without cooking "snow" of grated coconut, drifts of whipped cream, chopped pistachio, coloured sugars, all pressed into service around the turned-out shapes that jelly moulds made fashionable. The word snow was applied loosely to anything white and heaped: apple snow, lemon snow, and this, which is the simplest of the family, being nothing but the raw nut and a grater. It is a technique to be learned once and applied wherever a plain sweet needed finishing.