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[AlohaDawg]

Dragonfruit & durian chutney maybe?

Dragonfruit, yay,
Durian, nay.

Excellent Suggestion, though, Chutney in general. Chutney is kind of like Asian Salsa; great fresh flavors, bold or spicy or both, nice mouth-feel and would give great flavor and texture variety to meatballs. That's an idea I'm going to file away for sure.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Ooh, I can tell my durian story.

Some years ago, my then-roommate and I went to the Eden Supermarket in Falls Church, which is the biggest Vietnamese grocery in the area.  Dried giraffe in boxes, sauces with no English on the label, barbecued animals in the fron window under heat lamps, all that.  We're the only non-Asian people in there.  I get all kind of sauces and noodles and stuff, and before we go up to check out Rob says "Let's get something to eat on the way home."  We find their cookies and sweets section, and they have a lot of wafer-type cookies, mostly in standard flavors like chocolate and CUNT.  But we want something crazy and Asian, so we get a package that says "durian" on it and has some weird fruit on the front.

So we're driving home and we break out the cookies.  We each eat half of one and we're looking at each other like "What the hell?"  It was like eating cookies with a layer of filthy paste inside.  I threw the other half of mine out the window. 

We stopped at another store on the way home, and when we got back in the car we found that the open package of cookies had stunk up the car.  We pulled into a gas station to throw them away.

[Ben-San]

Update: I made the meatballs with more soaked bread, no flour, and somewhat lower heat. No smoke and they turned out well.

[kellichou]

With the internets and all this may be redundant, but it's handy to keep plain, dry, shredded coconut on hand in the pantry (not toasted, not sweetened).  You just need hot water, cheesecloth, and dry shredded coconut to make great coconut milk!  You can also grate up fresh coconut--the page below details the process.

Dried/dessicated coconut instructions nabbed from:  http://www.asianonlinerecipes.com/cooking_guide/coconut_milk.php  They include labor-saving use of a blender (see below)!

 Using desiccated coconut : Many cooks use desiccated coconut for making milk. It is much easier and quicker to prepare than grating fresh coconut, and in curries you cannot tell the difference. Put 2 cups desiccated coconut in a large bowl and pour over 2 1/2 cups hot water. Allow to cool to lukewarm, then knead firmly with the hand for a few minutes and strain through a fine strainer or a piece of muslin, squeezing out as much liquid as possible. This should produce approximately 1 1/2 cups thick coconut milk.

Repeat the process using the same coconut and 2 1/2 cups more hot water. This extract will yield approximately 2 cups of thin coconut milk.

Using a blender : With an electric blender you save time and a lot of hard work. Put 2 cups desiccated coconut and 2 1/2 cups of hot water in blender container, cover and blend for about 30 seconds. Strain through a fine sieve or piece of muslin, squeezing out all the moisture. Repeat the process using the same coconut and 2 1/2 cups more of hot water.

Sometimes a richer milk is required.  For this, hot milk replaces the water and only the first extract is used. However, a second extract will yield a flavorful and reasonably rich grade of coconut milk that can be used in soups, curries or other dishes.

[Ruta Bagas]

And to think I was laughed at for trying that when we didn't have any coconut milk in!

[AlohaDawg]

Why would you go through all that with desiccated coconut when canned coconut milk is ubiquitous? I can get it in Cleveland so I can't believe you can't get it anywhere..

[Ruta Bagas]

Yeah, but when you don't notice you've got none until thirty seconds before it's to go in the pan you don't exactly have chance to pop to the shops.

[AlohaDawg]

Yeah, see, I tend to check the cupboards and decide what to cook based on what I have. Or I shop for ingredients for a specific dish if it's something that I don't make often.  But I almost never get caught short.

[Ruta Bagas]

Ah, I generally do the same. But I'd just come by a fine new cookbook and misread the ingredients list in my excitement.

On the plus side, such occasional failings allow for invigorating attempts at rescue.

[AlohaDawg]

Ah, I generally do the same. But I'd just come by a fine new cookbook and misread the ingredients list in my excitement.

On the plus side, such occasional failings allow for invigorating attempts at rescue.

QFT. And I always tell my daughter that no matter what happens in the kitchen, you gotta taste what you made because you never know - some mistakes/miscues/missteps/ugly attempts are awesome.