Coconut Soup

Ingredients

• 6 oz grated coconut
• 6 oz rice flour
• 0.5 tsp mace
• to taste cayenne pepper
• to taste salt
• 300 ml boiling cream
• 3 quarts medium stock

Method

The dish rides on coconut infusion — you're extracting flavour and fat from the solids into the stock through gentle heat. Weigh 170g grated coconut per litre of medium stock. Use freshly grated coconut if you can; desiccated won't give you the same fat yield or depth. Bring the stock to a bare simmer — not a boil, which would emulsify the oils too aggressively and cloud what should be a clean, silken broth. Add the coconut and hold the temperature steady for one hour. You'll smell when it's working: the aroma sharpens from sweet to slightly vegetal, which means the infusion is complete.

Strain the coconut solids through fine muslin or a conical sieve. Don't press the solids — you'll push fine particles through and muddy the liquid. The strained stock should be pale and smell distinctly of coconut. This is your base.

Make a thickening|liaison with the rice flour and cream: whisk 90g rice flour into 300ml cold cream until completely smooth, breaking any lumps against the side of the bowl. This prevents the flour from lumping when it hits hot liquid. Bring the strained stock to a gentle simmer and stream the liaison in slowly, stirring constantly with a whisk. The starch gelatinises and thickens on contact with heat; stop adding when the soup coats the back of a spoon and a line drawn through it holds for a second. Rice flour gives a silken texture — less heavy than wheat flour thickening and it won't mask the coconut.

Season with 2.5g salt to start (adjust after tasting), a quarter teaspoon of ground mace, and cayenne to heat — begin with a pinch and build. The mace is controlling here; it's warm and faintly bitter, which balances the cream's heaviness and the coconut's sweetness. Serve at 75°C in warm bowls. The soup splits if it boils after the liaison is added, so keep the heat gentle once thickened.