When it rains, it pours. We were introduced to coconut vinegar several months ago by a reader who asked what it was and if we had used it. Well, our answers were no and no. Yet, the query sparked our quest to attain coconut vinegar and integrate it into our food. Since coconut vinegar arrived on our doorstep, it has been used in many forms, from pickling chufa nuts to a pan sauce for roast chicken. In all our culinary extrapolations with coconut vinegar, it never dawned on me to pickle coconut until this morning. I made a syrup with rice vinegar, salt, and isomalt and poured it over dried coconut flakes. When the syrup was absorbed, I placed the pickled coconut into the oven to dry for a while. The drying took longer than I anticipated because I had the oven quite low to avoid any coloring of the coconut. When the coconut was dry, I let it chill and ground it further to a uniform grain size. Today, we used the pickled coconut to accent lamb rib-eye with date-miso, sprouted cumin, and cilantro. I am quite pleased with the resulting pickled grains of coconut; I just wish it would not have taken me so long to think of it.
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