Well-being Holidays: Heart, body and mind in Sri Lanka

Well-being holidays are becoming more and more popular as stress at home increases and people look for holidays that leave them with a healthy mind and a healthy body.

If you’re looking to cleanse your body, Sri Lanka is a great place to start.  With a multitude of relaxing and cleansing treatments within the Ayurvedic health system, only a 7-day programme can re-juvenate.

We’re interested in how to support all the natural benefits of a holiday in Sri Lanka, with healthy foods to support the immune system. What’s more, the added benefit of eating vegan can boost your body as you remove any transferred stress and fear from foods which involve animal slaughter or the high-volume dairy industry.  It’s easy to eat vegan in Sri Lanka if you’re happy to live on rice and curry for the duration of your holiday.  If you’re looking for more choice, eating vegan can feel restricting.  We fully appreciate the concept of “my heart says ‘Go Vegan’ and my stomach says ‘Oooh but ice-cream!'”  So, we continue to hunt down recipes and experiment to create foods which support the sentiments of your heart and still tickle your taste buds!

Yesterday, on our mission to create vegan food (which doesn’t feel like you’re eating vegan), we made two types of Coconut ice-cream.  Both made with natural ingredients from our garden and low-volume production local produce, you can feel good as you tuck into a cheeky dessert.

Here’s how we did it.

Oh So Simple Coconut Ice-cream

What you need:

  • The flesh of 2 whole coconuts (or 2 tins of coconut cream if you have no access to the real thing)
  • 750ml filtered water
  • 250ml fresh coconut water
  • 2 bananas
  • 100g sugar
  • A pinch of cinnamon
  • Juice of 1 lime or lemon
  • Coconut treacle to taste

What you do:

  1. With a coconut grinder, grind the flesh of 2 whole coconuts and set aside.
  2. Place the coconut flesh, filtered water, coconut water, sugar, and pinch of cinnamon into a saucepan and bring to the boil on a low heat. Keep stirring.
  3. As the mixture comes to the boil add the juice of 1 lime or lemon and simmer for 20 minutes.
  4. Take the pan off the heat and set aside to cool.
  5. After about an hour, you can sieve your mixture to create a sweet coconut milk, which you leave in the fridge to cool completely. You may want to cool the mixture fully before you sieve it so as to extract all the goodies. The latter approach can also create a thicker coconut milk.
  6. Next you want to blend 2 bananas in an electric mixer. Then add the sweet coconut milk mixture to the blender and blend until smooth.
  7. Add coconut treacle to suit the sweetness of your tooth and blend again.
  8. Pour the mixture into silicon molds and place in the freezer overnight.
  9. You can serve with a banana on the side or with a fruit platter – both are equally delicious!

Please note if you’re using coconut cream you can simply blend all the ingredients together in a blender, pop in the freezer and serve!

 

Custard-style Banana and Coconut Ice-cream

What you need:

  • The flesh of 2 whole coconuts (or 2 tins of coconut cream if you have no access to the real thing)
  • 750ml filtered water
  • 250ml fresh coconut water
  • 4 bananas
  • 200g sugar
  • 1 tablespoon of cornflour
  • A pinch of cinnamon
  • Juice of 1 lime or lemon
  • Coconut treacle to taste

What you do:

  1. With a coconut grinder, grind the flesh of 2 whole coconuts and set aside.
  2. Place the coconut flesh, filtered water, coconut water and pinch of cinnamon into a saucepan and bring to the boil on a low heat. Keep stirring.
  3. As the mixture comes to the boil add the juice of 1 lime or lemon and simmer for 20 minutes.
  4. Take the pan off the heat and set aside to cool.
  5. Cool the mixture fully before you sieve it so as to extract all the goodies. You may even want to cool the mixture overnight in the fridge and then sieve.
  6. Pop the milk back into a saucepan and bring to just under boiling point, slowly.
  7. Then in a metal jug add the sugar and cornflour and a small amount of the warm coconut milk until the texture is as thick as you want the main custard to be.
  8. Slowly add in the rest of the warmed coconut milk and keep stirring.
  9. Pop the entire mixture back into the saucepan and thicken over heat. Keep stirring and do not let the mixture boil.
  10. Take off the heat and leave to cool for 20 mins.
  11. Next you want to blend 4 bananas in an electric mixer. Then add the sweet coconut milk mixture to the blender and blend until smooth.
  12. Add coconut treacle to suit the sweetness of your tooth and blend again.
  13. Pour the mixture into silicon molds and place in the freezer overnight.
  14. This ice-cream freezers with a darker colour than the first and has a strong banana flavour. It’s much closer to a dairy ice-cream consistency.

We hope you enjoy these coconuty alternatives to dairy ice-cream 🙂

Happy cooking!