Coconut Jam-On-It

Greeting earthlings. I am in Lome once again not preparing for someone to ET, but for the marathon I have been training for since March. I'm having some personal problems, so instead of writing about them, I would like to share a recipe. It's coconut jam and it was born out of the womb of a Ms. Allison Green. Here it is:

First and foremost, one must know how to open a coconut. I do not really know how to do this, so I asked my friend, Bienvenue, to do it for me. He used a machete quite craftily. We poured the water out into a cup, which I then later used (for evil) in the jam. We then used knives to crack the "meat" of the coconut out of its shell. We then scraped the brown skin off of the coconut and washed the pieces before chopping them into very fine little pieces. Next time, I will probably use a grater. Here is Marthilde, my friend in village, demonstrating the cut coconut pieces.

After that hour long process, Bienvenue crushed the coconut pieces on a stone slab (Togolese use this to 'ecrase' most things they put in sauces, such as tomatoes, onions, piment, etc. especially for their fufu sauces. I think this is sort of like using a chopping board, except no choppy choppy, only crushy crushy.) Note picture of him in action. His girlfriend, Marthilde, made fun of him and started singing a booty shaking song as he was doing it. I laughed a lot.

So, next we added the coconut water along with enough water to cover the coconut bits. We used 3 coconuts for this recipe, which yielded 3 small jars of coconut jam. I used about 2 cups of water. I also added all the cinnamon I had left (about 2 tbsp), 1 tbsp of vanilla and about 1 1/2 cups of sugar. We then boiled the living scheisse out of it for about 45 minutes. Here is a picture of the hotter than hell fire we used to create this jam. Once, the "jam" had a sticky or "gel-ly" texture to it, we set it aside and boiled our jars and lids so that we could add the hot mixture to the hot jars. We then placed the filled jars back into the boiling water and let them sit in the hell for about 1 minute. I then carefully removed the jars and placed them on their lids to "seal the deal". And that's that. It's delish and I recommend everyone try it.

Maybe next week, I will send a more personal story of my travails here in We(s)t Africa. It's rainy season and everyone is out in the fields. Except for me. This last picture is of Marthilde acting as a chief of the coconut jam jars (Chiefs in Togo wear fabric draped over them as she is demonstrating here). Wish me luck on the marathon this Sunday. And I would like to send a shout out to Ivy Antigone Chiavarini. M'waezo lo (Welcome in Ewe)! I can't wait to meet you, you little precious morsel!