One of my earliest memories is of an old lady approaching me, smiling, and offering me a piece of cake that had the most amazing fragrance my little nose had ever encountered. It was only later that I learned the woman was my maternal great-grandmother and that piece of cake was this smoked coconut cake. My great-grandmother died when I was very little, and I have no recollection of anything about her other than that day and that piece of cake with its astonishing scent. I’d like to think that maybe my curiosity about food began that day.
My great-grandmother made all of her baked goods in a large cylindrical clay stove built in the late 1800s. It had roughly the same dimensions as a 30-gallon steel drum, with a chamber at the bottom where the charcoal went and a perforated clay grate set about one third of the way down from the top where she put the food. A metal plate acted as a lid as well as the place where she put glowing coals to brown the surface of the food underneath it. My great-grandmother made her fragrant coconut cake—dense and chewy inside and crisp on the top—in this oven, using a combination of coconut husks, dried corn husks, bagasse, and local wood for fuel.
Not equipped with the same tool, I make her sali krop with my pellet grill/smoker, using cherrywood for fuel.
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