DESCRIPTION

A decade ago, when I was a semi-degenerate English teacher in Thailand, I befriended my local coconut seller. He took me on whisky-fueled road trips to coconut plantations and taught me to crack them open with a cleaver. Many years passed since those exciting times. Back in New York, I had a series of jobs and was never happy. Then last winter I was in Thailand attending a friend’s wedding. I was sitting on the beach, staring out at the turquoise sea and lush green mountains on the other side of the bay, eating coconut ice cream out of a halved coconut shell. It occurred to me then that I should do this back in New York. Not just approximate Thai-style coconut milk ice cream, but try to capture that feeling of being someplace special, a place you visited, loved, and wish you could get back to.