This is an easy and delicious cooling dessert and it’s made from the bit that you usually throw away when you cut a musk melon.
Musk Melon.
This is what you do:
Scoop out the seeds of the musk melon and rub it through a sieve with a plastic spoon. You will end up with some thick sweet-tasting musk melon pulp.
Musk Melon Seeds.
Meanwhile boil 10gm of Agar in 900mls (1 quart) of water. You can buy agar from Chinese Super-markets or Health Food Shops.
Packet of Agar.Dissolving Agar.
Once the agar has dissolved, mix in the melon pulp. I also added passion fruit pulp with seeds. I used the wild Mayan Passion Fruit, Kun Batz…how’s that for something special!
Kun Batz.
Refrigerate for about an hour and enjoy! This is a healthy alternative to a cream bun. 😉
I have written about the making of banana flour in previous posts and our main reason for doing this was for preservation. From a completely practical point of view, if you are going to go through the trouble of processing (grating, drying and grinding), it is really important that you actually like eating it!
Home-made Banana Flour.
Hmmm….we were very dubious initially after making a banana flour pizza made from a recipe found on the Internet. The recipe called for 4 cups of banana flour and when I baked it in the oven, it came out like stiff card-board…let’s say that if you threw it at somebody you could cause bodily harm. We valiantly put toppings on it and ate it like a pizza.
The next morning…and a few days after…we were totally constipated…
We then decided to do the math:
4 cups of flour is equal to 32 bananas
therefore, we ate the equivalent of 16 bananas each in one sitting.
Imagine eating 16 bananas all at once! And worse still, without the water content of each banana!
This of course results in constipation!
Anyway, after that escapade, I was in no mood to make anything with this flour! A few weeks later, I decided to use it up and make dog food …I didn’t even think about it…I just put a cup of flour in a pot of water and let it boil. It actually came out like a nice porridge. Much to Gnome’s dismay, the tasty looking porridge was for the dogs and not for us:
“What do you mean it’s for the dogs?!!”
Its For The Dogs?
Since then, I have formulated the Banana Flour Porridge as follows:
1/2 cup of banana flour
1 quart (900mls) of water
1 can of sweetcorn (optional)
1 tbsp sugar
Pinch of salt
Place ingredients in a pot and stir on medium flame ( about 7 to 10 minutes) until the porridge thickens. Can be eaten hot or cold.
This serves 2 people. Yes, 1/2 cup of flour = 8 bananas! So, each serving is four bananas. The result: tasty meal and happily non-constipated!
Hello Everyone. We have fresh produce from our farm to sell and will be in Punta Gorda tomorrow (and every Wednesday) to sell our stuff. Email or Facebook us if you are interested and we can drop it off for you in town tomorrow.
We have the Peach Palm Miso for sale. This product is made in the same traditional way as normal miso but we have used Peach Palm (Pejibaye) instead of soya bean.
Peach Palm Miso.
This is a gluten-free, vegan natural flavouring for soups, sauces and marinades. Simply use this as an alternative to a bouillon cube. You only need to use a teaspoon at a time so one bag goes a long way. Check out The Apothecary for prices.
We will also have our coconut cream for sale which can be used for curries, stews, coconut rice and smoothies.
Hello!! We are back in action with more interesting things to show you because we have procured a camera. I finally bit the bullet and bought a new android phone…one of those blocky looking things with a camera (of course) and many things that do not concern me like the Android and the numerous applications. Gnome is messing around with it in his Gnomish way and actually having a lot of fun with the gadget!
Anyway, we have been making cheese out of coconut milk. Coconut milk, along with the cream, can be hand-squeezed out of grated coconut.
Grated Coconut.
This liquid eventually separates into the thick, white cream at the top and the coconut milk at the bottom. We sell off our coconut cream to the local market as Belizeans like to cook their rice and beans in this. For the Toledo readers, you can buy this from Green Supaul’s in Punta Gorda.
Coconut Cream For Sale.
We kept the coconut milk until we had acquired a volume of about 2 gallons (8 litres) which was roughly equivalent to about 100 coconuts in total. The coconut milk is high in protein (similar to milk) and so we decided to try to make “cheese” out of it.
Coconut Milk in Pot.
First of all, we placed the coconut milk in a stainless steel pot and boiled the milk until it produced curds which floated up to the surface. This takes about 30 minutes and you have to keep on stirring to prevent the curds from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
Coconut Curds on Surface of Boiled Coconut Milk.
We allowed this to cool down for about two hours and then drained the curds into a cotton towel on a sieve (you can use cheese cloth…we just didn’t have any).
Draining Coconut Curd.
This was left to drain overnight and the liquid part, the whey, was collected in a basin under the dripping curds. At this point, it looks and tastes very similar to ricotta cheese and you can eat it at this point if you prefer. We gave the whey to our animals to drink.
Coconut Ricotta.
The next morning, we wrapped the drained curd in a towel and placed it between two clean blocks of wood and applied a weight on it (5 gallon carboy containing wine). After 24 hours, we removed the weight.
Pressing Coconut Cheese.
To make this into feta-style cheese, we removed the coconut cheese from the cloth and placed it in a clean glass container. Next, we added about 1 cup of salt to dry salt it.
This was done this morning and we will leave it to salt for three days. After that, we will cut the cheese into cubes and store them in brine. We will let you know what it tastes like…so far so good.
