Desserts: Boiled sea coconut (海 底 椰 or coco de mer) syrup

Diluted sea coconut syrup with ice cubes

Sea coconut is a controversial fruit because it's not from the bottom of the sea despite the Chinese name (海 底 椰, which translates into 'deep-sea coconut'). In fact, sea coconuts are fruits of the sugar palm tree.

Left: Cough mixture (from Amazon's website)

Right: Fresh sea coconut

Above: Hosen's canned honey sea coconut

My grandmother used to boil sea coconut soup for me as she says that it's soothing for the lungs (when I'm  down with coughing or with an itchy throat). The other medicinal item she'll feed me twice daily with is the African Sea Coconut Cough Mixture. To this day, she'll buy for me whenever she knows that I'm coughing.

It's rare to find fresh sea coconuts at supermarkets and so I will buy them when I spot them. I was fortunate to take the last 2 packs when I was at Shengsiong supermarket last Saturday. Each packet costs S$2.95.

What you need:

4 to 5 pieces of sea coconut (cleaned and sliced)

A handful of dried longans

6 to 8 red dates

Rock sugar

.
Method:

Note:  I'm not fond of leaving stuff to boil over fire so I chose to cook this dessert using my old Zojirushi rice cooker (congee mode). I also prefer to make the dessert thick and sweet so that I can have it over a bowl of ice-cubes and for keeping in the fridge for a few days. 

(1) Wash and remove the brown coating off the sea coconut. Slice the fruit into strips.

(2) Add water, sea coconut, dried logans, red dates and rock sugar into the inner pot of the rice cooker. Sea coconut takes quite a long while to boil so I set my rice cooker to Congee-mode (a few hours).

After 6 hours of boiling and re-boiling

(3) Reset the cooker if the sea coconut is still very hard after the first round of boiling. I like the dessert almost syrup-like and so added quite some rock sugar.

(4) Serve a ladle's worth of sea coconut syrup over a bowl of ice cubes! Keep the remaining in the fridge and finish them within 3 days. Sea coconut syrup goes nicely with Sabah Tea ice jelly too!

Cost: less than S$3 (for 4 servings)
Time: 6 hours (done by the rice-cooker)