Santen

In this book, I have translated santen as ‘coconut milk’, but the Javanese word is shorter and sounds more attractive and is, I think, less likely to be misunderstood. Santen is not the liquid which you pour from a newly-opened nut, but a mixture of water and the oils which can be pressed from grated coconut flesh. It is used all over Indonesia, both to thicken sauces and to add flavour, and generally speaking no other thickening agent is ever used—certainly not wheat flour, which is almost unknown in most areas, nor rice flour. In some recipes, santen forms the basis of a more or less thick sauce; in others, it is absorbed wholly into the meat in the course of cooking, and gives it a delicious nutty flavour which is quite unobtainable in any other way. It is sometimes said that the flavour of santen is an acquired taste, and certainly no one would want their cooking to reek of coconut; but santen, properly used, is indispensable to Indonesian food, and I don’t recall meeting anyone who did not acquire the taste within the first mouthful or so.