Coconuts and Fish Amok

› PHNOM PENH, 2020...........................

I’ve always loved coconut. When I was young, we would celebrate October birthdays with my mother’s brother’s family and our family’s friends the McGees and the Robinsons, up in the mountains of North Carolina when the autumn leaves peaked. Mama would make a red velvet cake, and Mrs. McGee would make a German chocolate cake, which remains my favorite. I don’t have the typical southerner’s sweet tooth, but I’ll eat just about anything made with coconuts. My first taste of fresh coconut was in the summer of 1958 in Panama; sailing as a teenager with my parents in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, we found coconut in all manner of dishes from breakfast to fish soups to sweet tarts.