“This sauce is tastier for me than any crème anglaise I’ve ever come across. Coconuts are an amazing dairy substitute and one of my favourite ingredients for making desserts. It’s best to use fresh coconuts for this dish – look out for young Thai coconuts.”
– Katie Sanderson, chef, Dublin
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
4 blood oranges
A handful of fresh mint, torn
Coconut sauce:
1 large or 2 small fresh coconuts, water retained (or 190g coconut meat)
75g cashews, soaked
4 tbsp maple syrup (or other sweetener such as honey)
A pinch of sea salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
½ vanilla pod scraped
120ml coconut oil, melted
Pecan crunch:
150g jumbo oats
75g pecans (or hazelnuts), crumbled
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp coconut oil, melted
2 tbsp maple syrup (or other sweetener such as honey)
A generous pinch of sea salt
METHOD
First soak the cashews in water for 4 to 8 hours.
Carefully open the coconuts, retaining the water. Here’s how to do it:
Clean the meat. (If you have any left over, it’s easy to freeze and is great added to curries or smoothies.)
Put all the ingredients except the coconut oil into a high-speed blender and blitz, adding the melted coconut oil in a slow, steady stream, until smooth. Add a glass of the water retained from the coconut (or more if you want the sauce to be thinner). Taste and adjust the sweetness depending on your preferences.
Refrigerate till chilled. This will keep for a few days if you have any left over.
Next make the pecan crunch. Preheat the oven to 180C. Combine the dry ingredients, then add the melted coconut oil and maple syrup and stir thoroughly. Pour into a lined baking tray, shaking it so the mixture is level. Place in the oven for 15 minutes, stirring halfway through. Remove when the mixture is nicely browned and leave to cool. Store in an airtight container if you’re not using it straight away.
Juice one blood orange and divide the rest into halved segments.
To serve, place a handful of the pecan mixture in each bowl and top with segments of blood orange, a dollop of coconut sauce, a few torn leaves of mint and a drizzle of juice.
Update (16 March 2015): We’ve tweaked the recipe slightly so that it now suggests adding at least a glass of coconut water to the mix, which we find improves the consistency of the sauce.