Tricky Treat O' Lemony Sneak It

I am a HUGE fan of Claire Robinson and her 5-ingredient fix. She said this line: You can be your own chef. That, plus Julia Child’s encouragement: The only real stumbling block is fear of failure; in cooking you've got to have a "what-the-hell" attitude. As far as embarking on culinary adventure is concern, they echo my sentiment. Yes, they echo my sentiment and not the other way around. LOL.

If you had seen Any Given Sunday (one of my favorite movies, mainly because of Al Pacino’s punchy lines…tmi), the character of Dennis Quaid said this famous line to Willie Beamen: See it before you do it. That line seemed to have been integrated into my preparation before I dive into something for the first time. A conditioning of some kind. It seems very applicable when it comes to cooking, because you know, who wants to waste ingredients. That being said, I thought of making a sweet treat from combining lemon, lemon grass and coconut cream. The idea came from Dove’s body wash, the one with lemongrass and lemon scent. I love it so much that I thought of translating it into dessert. Lol. But I was not able to fully imagine the taste in my head, yet.

Nevertheless, minus the lemon grass, I cooked up a jellied dessert of lemon and coconut cream. I try to make it with five ingredients (call me a copycat, lol):

1 cup of Coconut Cream

1 cup of Evaporated Milk

½ cup Refined Sugar

1 pc of Lemon

1 ½ tbsp of yellow gelatin

¼ cup Evaporated Milk (to dissolve the gelatin)

1 tsp Lemon zest

Coconut is abundant in my country. But for the purpose of measurement and availability (in consideration of foreigners or another Filipino residing abroad who will fearlessly dare to try this) of Coconut Cream, I used the canned.

Whisk together the coconut cream and evaporated milk in a pan. Add sugar until dissolved. You can adjust the amount of sugar according to your preferred sweetness. Squeeze the juice of first half of the lemon. Taste and adjust to your preferred acidity. The acidity should balance the sweetness of the sugar. Add the lemon zest. Pour in the dissolved gelatin to the mixture and whisk to combine. When ready, put in the fire and slowly stir for about 5-10 minutes. Do not let it boil too much. The coconut cream reacts to heat and heat may tamper the properties of the cream, making the natural oil separates from it and changes the taste. When done, transfer to a molder or set it in glasses (like I did). Let it cool for few minutes before you put it in the refrigerator to chill.

This recipe is still in development. I have yet to incorporate the lemon grass, to try using cream (maybe the all purpose, because it is widely available in my country), to scrap out the gelatin and to use the fresh coconut cream. I will update when I can.

For now, it is called Coconut Lemon Gulaman. Hope you guys are having a Happy Halloween!!! J