Marylou's Buco Salad

This is a Filipino dessert that's bound to be a hit with everybody. If it isn't, you can stop reading my website. Truly, it's that popular. And I like to serve it at barbies because 1) it can be done the night before so you don't worry about dessert 2) it is refreshing after all that grilled meat. My Filipino friend Marylou makes the best buco salad. I have tried others but only Marylou's buco is excellent. That is because she uses a lot of coconut, nata de coco and whipping cream as versus using a lot of fruit cocktail and condensed milk only. I'm not sure if you can get hold of a coconut scraper like this one which my Filipino friend Fely friend got for me from Manila:



Ingenious and pretty isn't it, the coconut scraper.



Make sure you get a medium-old coconut. Too young and the salad will be soggy and there's no bite. Too old and it's hard to scrape. Make sure also not to scrape too deep or you get the brown skin which tastes woody.



Marylou's Buco Salad

3 large coconuts
1 x 850g large can mixed fruit cocktail*
3 cans nata de coco
1 cup thick dairy cream or whipping cream
2-3 T condensed milk, or to taste
1/8 t rose essence

*Don't use tropical fruit cocktail--too much soft papaya

1. Scrape the coconut flesh. Drain the fruits cocktail; squeeze lightly to remove some juice. Drain and lightly squeeze out some of the liquid from the nata de coco. Put everything into a large bowl and mix well.

2. Buco salad is best made the night before and frozen in your freezer. Two hours before serving, put it in the chiller section of your fridge. If it's too frozen, leave it at room temperature earlier. If you don't want to freeze it overnight, make it a couple of hours ahead and freeze it until the salad around the sides of the bowl are frozen but the center is still soft.