15 coconut sauce recipes

Folded Sri Lankan omelettes get sliced and bathed in a spiced coconut milk gravy with curry leaves, turmeric, and a bright squeeze of lime. Ready in just 15 minutes.

Seeni sambol is a sweet-savory Sri Lankan onion sauce with deep-fried golden onions simmered in tamarind coconut milk with Maldive fish, cardamom, and chili. Addictive on everything from rice to bread.

Party pleaser meatballs: coconut-studded baked meatballs glazed in a sweet-savory sauce of grape jelly, chutney, red wine, and mustard. The retro cocktail-party appetizer that still disappears first from the buffet.

Thai pumpkin and coconut cream soup blends shrimp, lemongrass, and chilies into a paste, then simmers cubed pumpkin in coconut milk with basil for a fragrant Southeast Asian first course.

Basic peanut-style dipping sauce (no actual peanuts) with cashew butter, tahini, coconut milk, lime, miso, and ginger. A richer, Thai-leaning satay sauce for grilled skewers, coconut shrimp, or crudités.

Spicy and tasty way to have potatoes. You can use any type of Thai curry. I use a taste of Thai Panang Curry Paste.

Rich Thai red curry with prawns and butternut squash in coconut milk sauce, ready in 60 minutes for weeknight Thai dinners with authentic restaurant flavor.

Thai red curry scallops (Chuu-Chii) with homemade curry paste, coconut cream, kaffir lime leaves, and fish sauce. Includes a from-scratch paste recipe using galangal, lemongrass, and shrimp paste.

Reptile pot pie poaches alligator, snake, or iguana meat in a Thai-Indian curry sauce of coconut milk, fish sauce, turmeric, and coriander. Served over baby vegetables with fresh cilantro. Bold, unexpected, and surprisingly approachable.

Traditional Thai green curry with chicken, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, green peas, serrano chiles, and loads of fresh basil in a rich separated-coconut-cream sauce.

Dry your beans well before cooking. To get the traditional ‘blistered’ look of the beans you will need to shallow-fry them for 5-6 minutes and stir constantly to avoid burning.

Traditional Tahitian ma'oa and pahua tairo combines fresh snails or clams with taioro (fermented coconut-shrimp sauce), onions, and garlic. An authentic South Pacific delicacy.

The health benefits of green papaya exceed those of the ripe variety. Raw green papaya is packed with vitamins, enzymes and phytonutrients. It contains vital nutrients including potassium, magnesium, and vitamins A, C, E and B. However, perhaps the most important health property of green papaya is its ability to improve digestion and the uptake of nutrients, raising enzyme levels and improving assimilation, and thus also strengthening the immune system. Green papaya contains two of the most powerful plant proteolytic enzymes: papain and chymopapain. These enzymes excel at breaking down proteins, fats and carbohydrates, as well as aiding healthy digestion. Papain can only be found in the papaya fruit and is more effective than pepsin produced by our own stomachs.

Simple Indian potato curry with mango, coconut oil, and curry powder. Tender spiced potatoes in a fragrant sauce, vegetarian and naturally vegan.

Plum tuna, canned tuna warmed in a sweet-tangy plum jam sauce spiked with ginger, garlic and soy, served over rice with nuts, parsley and coconut on top. A retro pantry dinner that cooks in 30 minutes.