things to do with coconut milk

instead of making curry with a can of coconut milk that had been sitting in the pantry for a couple of months, i decided to try out a couple of things in hopes that i could expand my horizons. we were going out of town the next day, and i wanted to use up what would spoil in the fridge while we were away and freeze it or eat it up.
with it i decided to make a thai chicken soup and some blueberry frozen yogurt popsicles, both great.

now, just in general, i make a lot of soups. i adore all components of soupmaking and find it a great way to acquire a taste for underused ingredients, especially winter greens and pulses. why, just this past week we've been on a sort of soup kick (what with me getting sick and andy allllllmost catching it)and have gobbled up grean pea with turkey bacon, curry lentil with kale, crab chowder, and carrot and tomato with thyme. having soup bubbling away does something to you. smelling it change from boiling ingredients to some kind of cohesive solution for hours before you can actually eat it is just... comforting.

this soup, however, is meant to come together in about as much time as it takes for it to come to a boil and for your vegetables to cook, and maybe a few minutes after. it's sort of meant as a catch-all for ingredients that you already have on hand, like cooked chicken and maybe cooked potatoes. basically, the broth is relatively equal parts coconut milk to chicken stock, with the juice of a lime, some kind of chili or heat, and a knob of ginger floating around and retrieved when the soup is done. coriander is a classic addition, but i didn't have any. sure you could add a couple of drops of fish sauce if you have it, but that's it. i added carrots, broccoli, about 1/2 of a cooked potato, and some diced chicken. if you're using raw ingredients, just chop them in smaller pieces than you would ordinarily so that it cooks faster.

the frozen yogurt popsicles are amazing, and it's all thanks to the coconut milk. i don't know about you, but all of the healthful frozen snacks just taste like ice with some kind of flavoring. eating them is about as thrilling as licking on an icicle, and the consistency isn't far off. the coconut milk brings in the extra fat that makes the popsicle easy to bite off and kind of enhances the milkiness of the yogurt. i just added about three tablespoons to a batch, which made appx. a dozen full-sized popsicles with about a 1/2 cup of leftovers, and it really made them taste incredible.

also in there are some blueberries, blueberry juice, raspberry syrup that's been in the fridge for longer than i should admit, lime juice and zest, pineapples, and honey. what i was doing with all of those ingredients at the ready, i can't really speak to. i guess sometimes it pays to be a pack rat in the kitchen.