Breadfruit with Coconut Cream
Serves 8.
Ingredients
1 half-ripe breadfruit, about 1.5 kg/3 lb
500 ml/1 pint/2 cups freshly squeezed
coconut cream or 400 ml/14 fl oz can coconut cream
1 teaspoon sea salt or to taste
Directions
Bake the breadfruit in a moderate oven for 1 hour or until it is easily pierced with a fork. Remove from oven and cut it in half. Discard core and skin, and put the pulp into a large bowl in which it can be mashed with a potato masher. It is easier if this is done while the breadfruit is hot. Add the salt and coconut cream and with a spoon divide the breadfruit into walnut-sized pieces. Serve hot.
Note: If the breadfruit is perfectly ripe, soft and sweet, it need not be baked. Instead, pull out the stem, cut the fruit in halves lengthways and scoop out pulp with a spoon. Measure the pulp and mix in half the volume of coconut cream, and one sixth the volume of sugar. Add salt to bring out the flavour.
Recipe excerpted from Encyclopedia of Asian Food by Charmaine Solomon (Periplus Editions, 1998)