The Nonya cooking ingredient Santan or Coconut Milk, we don't like watery sauces in our cooking and using coconut milk gives
thick sauces without fresh cream," explains chef Suan Neo, who recommends tinned
Chao Koh coconut milk for cooking.
The liquid you can hear sloshing around inside coconuts is not the milk, but
coconut water. The milk ( lemak ) is extracted from the flesh of the coconut.
In the hawker markets of Singapore, stalls prepare fresh coconut milk by mixing
grated flesh with hot water and they squeeze out the milk by passing it through
a filter.
Despite having over 20% fat, Santan or Coconut Milk is largely composed of lauric acid, a
fatty acid also found in breast milk, which has a wide array of beneficial
attributes including antiviral properties.