Coconut barfi
I was watching Chocolate, the South Korean drama over the week. I cried buckets while watching it. The whole thing that sometimes all you need is food to heal and how the hope that we all heal at some point was just a lot of emotions.
It also made me think about how I have taken to liking the food I wasn’t particularly fond of or even liked when I was a kid.
One of the things I could absolutely not stand as a kid was ‘koprapaak’ (coconut barfi). I always felt that the coconut bits are just going to get stuck in my throat and I’ll choke on them and die.
In Delhi in December 2018, I had coconut laddoos made of desiccated coconut and milkmaid and I could not stop myself from eating them. They were tiny little laddoos and I easily popped in three one after the other without realising that ‘moment on lips, forever on hips’ bit. They were so good that I even remember the first time I relished them so very clearly.
For someone who thought she’d choke on desiccated coconut, it was a surprise even to myself that I took to coconut laddoos like that. It was like I wanted to finish all the years of missed quota as soon as I could.
Coconut laddoos, when cut in square shape becomes coconut barfi. After that day in December 2018, I have had coconut barfi from popular sweet shop in Delhi as well as Ahmedabad and even mandir ka prasad (where they give ‘koprapak’ as prasad). Oh, and Bounty chocolate. Sweetened desiccated coconut wrapped in a layer of chocolate. What is there not to like.
And now I wonder why I missed out on so many years of coconut barfi.
