This is my family’s absolute favourite salad, I think largely because it’s packed with flavour and doesn’t contain any salad leaves! The main ingredients in this salad are coconut flesh and cucumber, delivering a really fresh taste. The chilli gives the salad a little kick and the juices from the lemon and lime really create a zesty, mouthwatering flavour that’s exactly what you want from this kind of salad.
I like to serve this as a side dish when I’m cooking East-Asian food, especially whole fish or curry, as it compliments the smokey and spicy flavours perfectly. But in my opinion it’s the textures of this salad that really make it. The slight crunch from the grated coconut and the crisp and juice texture of the coconut.
And if you needed any other reason to try out this salad, it’s super healthy and takes next to no time to make!
Ingredients
- 1 large coconut
- 1.5 large cucumbers
- 1 red chilli, deseeded
- Juice of 1 lime
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- 30g fresh coriander/cilantro
- 50g radishes
- 300ml tinned coconut milk
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar
- 10g salt
- 10g cracked black pepper
Method
- Begin by cracking open the coconut and scraping out the flesh (discard the shell and juice). A good technique for opening the coconut is to place it in a sandwich bag and then hit it really hard a few times with a rolling pin, as this making the process just less messy and explosive!.When you’re scraping out the flesh, just use a knife to wedge underneath the flesh and prize it out of the shell (using a spoon and scooping will get you nowhere fast!)
- Once you have all the flesh out, grate it with a grater and add all the grated coconut flesh to a large mixing bowl.
- Peel the skin off the cucumbers, scrape out the fleshy middle with a spoon (and discard it) and then cut the cucumber into 2” cubes. Add all of this to the mixing bowl with the coconut.
- Next, scrape the seeds out of the red chilli and discard, then cut it finely and add it to mixing bowl.
- Take half of the radishes and thinly slice them. Then get the other half of the radishes and grate them. Add all of this together into the mixing bowl.
- Roughly chop the coriander/cilantro and add to the mixing bowl, along with the salt and pepper. Now mix everything in the bowl together well with your hands.
- In a measuring jug, pour in the coconut milk from the can along with the juice of 1/2 lemon, a whole lime juice and the tablespoon of sugar - mix this well with a spoon. This is your salad dressing.
- Pour your as much of your salad dressing over the salad as you want, then all you need to do is plate it up in a nice big salad bowl and you’re good to go!
Wow! I’m definitely trying this. I have coconut trees. Thanks
Awesome, let us know how it goes Chinelo! Also, so jealous that you have coconut trees!
Seriously? Discard the “juice”?
It’s water (young coconuts) or milk (brown coconuts).
The water or milk is packed full of nutrients
Also, a rolling pin? Please
An old serated bread knife, hammer and pitcher is the way to go. I have been doing it daily for years.
Brown coconuts are worthless. Not worth the effort. Young coconuts are the way to go, and the meat has way less fat than old, brown hairy coconuts