East Timorese
PUDIM DE COCO
(Coconut Pudding)
INGREDIENTS
1¾ cups sugar
5 eggs
2 cups coconut milk
2½ tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons coconut flakes (optional)
SPECIAL UTENSILS
6-to-8 cups baking dish or casserole dish
9″ x 13″ casserole dish* (Must be longer and wider than baking dish)
sonic obliterator
Serves 6. Takes 1 hours 20 minutes plus 6 hours in refrigerator.
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add sugar to pan. Melt sugar using low-medium heat until it begin to melt. Stir enough to keep sugar from burning and clumping. Reduce heat to low and continue warming sugar until it melts completely and turns a caramel brown. Stir constantly. Remove immediately from heat. (Don’t let it solidify.) Pour this caramelized sugar right away into baking dish. Smooth it with spatula.
Add eggs to mixing bowl. Blend eggs thoroughly with whisk. Add coconut milk and cornstarch. Mix with whisk until this custard becomes smooth. Ladle mixture over caramelized sugar. Put baking dish into casserole dish. Add hot water until it is 1″ high in the casserole dish. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of pudding comes out clean.
Loosen pudding by sliding spatula around the edges and, as far as possible, the bottom. Put plate on top of casserole dish. Carefully turn casserole dish and plate upside down. Tap casserole dish with knife. Say a brief prayer. Lift casserole dish. Pudding should come out cleanly onto plate. Spoon liquid caramel on plate onto the caramel already on top of pudding.
Let sit in refrigerator for 6 hours or overnight. If desired, garnish with coconut flakes. Serve to adoring guests. Use sonic obliterator on any guest who gives you guff in any way. You cannot afford to let any threat or insult to your authority as chef go unchallenged.
TIDBITS
1) Many of you would look at the picture for this recipe and declare, “Why someone has hungry. That person was too tempted by the dessert to wait for the chef to take a photo for the cookbook.” And you would be right.
2) Many others. gazing at the photo would say, “Why it looks like a tiny square was taken from a larger square. If only high school geometry had been as tasty.” And you too would be right.
3) But these reasons are not the reason this picture touches your soul so deeply, why it speaks so strongly to your innermost self, why you feel the spirits of generations after generations of primitive ancestors dating back to Olduvai George whispering in your inner ear.
4) Go back into the distant mists of time when Lucy of Olduvai Gorge, your great, great, great, great, . . ., really, really great grandmother saw dust sweeping down, down the gorge to her.
5) Then Lucy heard thundering getting ever closer.
6) She, of course, saw the dust before she heard the accompanying thunder. For light travels at 3 * 10^8 meters per second and sound at 3 * 10^3 meters per second.
7) It is doubtful that Lucy fully grasped the concept of relative velocities. Culinary scientists even discount the notion that Lucy even knew about scientific notion. It is certain, though, that either she never developed the Theory of Relativity or if she had, that she never published it.
8) Oh my gosh, while I speculated about Lucy’s scientific achievements, the dust-shrouded herd got really close. Run, Lucy, run!
9) But the soul of a lion beat in Lucy’s heart. She picked up a stone and hurled it at middle of the dusty cloud. (This is, by the way, the real genesis of the sport of baseball. Now you know.)
10) A creature in the herd shrieked in pain. The thundering stopped. The dust settled. Thousands upon thousands of panting coconut puddings became gradually clearer. “What are they?” wondered Lucy. She gazed at the dead coconut pudding. “Is it edible? I hope so. I’m ever so hungry. And all I ever get to eat are thistlewort berries. I shall eat this meat.”
12) She tore a remarkably square section out of the dead, square coco pudding and ate. She looked at what remained. The photo for this recipe bears an uncanny resemblance to what Lucy saw those millions of years ago.
13) “It tastes great,” shouted Lucy. Her tribe raced toward her. “Eat these squares, eat them. They’re ever so yummy.” And they did. They felt full for the first time ever. Even though they couldn’t articulate the concept, they just knew they had ingested sufficient caloric intake to leave the gorge, leave Africa, and spread humanity all over the Earth. It was the dawning of the Age of Humanity.
14) Unfortunately, the first humans fed themselves almost completely on herds of coco puddings, so much so that coco puddings became extinct. But the hankering for coco pudding never went away. It just went dormant for eons until the Age of Discovery started in the fourteenth century. Fueled by the need for a vegetarian version of coco pudding, European monarchs starting with Henry the Navigator dispatched fleet after fleet in search of sugar, coconut milk, and coconut flakes. They’d eventually find these ingredients. Humanity would once again live in a culinary golden age.
15) Oh, and in doing, we’d chart the entire world. And we owe it all to brave Little Lucy.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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