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There are many ways of doing this and for all of them it is best to begin with a fresh coconut and take it from there. Unfortunately, this can be time consuming but there are several preparations available which make things easier. We'll start, however, with how to prepare a fresh coconut for the freezer as this gives you the taste of fresh coconut with the bonus of being fairly convenient. You'll need a hammer for this and, if you don't want too much mess, a large nail.
As you can probably guess, it's all in the method. There will be three small dark depressions at one end of your coconut. These (or at least one of them) will be fairly soft - soft enough to tap a large nail into with a hammer. This will give you a small hole out of which you can shake the coconut milk. This is not the coconut milk we use in cooking - that comes in packets, or you can make it following the recipe below. You can, however, drink the stuff you collect - it's good.
The next step is to smash the coconut open with the hammer. When you've done that, use a blunt knife to prise the white coconut away from the shell. It will have a hard brown skin on the side which was stuck to the shell, but you can remove this with a potato peeler. All this is pretty heavy work and by this time your coconut will look really dirty, but persevere, you're almost done. All you have to do next is wash the pieces under running water and dry them with a paper towel. Keep them in a plastic bag in the freezer and each time you need fresh coconut simply take a piece out and grate it - no need to defrost. The fresh grated coconut can go straight into the pan for many recipes, or it can be used to make coconut milk.
There are various options here. The easiest is to use ready-made stuff from the supermarket. The best comes in little cardboard 'tetra-paks' and it's widely available. You can also find tinned stuff but it's pretty dire - okay if there's nothing else. I've occasionally found excellent powdered coconut milk - in India, and in the Middle East once, but I don't know how widely available it is elsewhere. If you find some, I would recommend stocking up even if you don't plan to use it immediately. The traditional method of making coconut milk uses grated coconut and hot (not boiling) water. Here's roughly how you do it.
To make one cup of coconut milk use about two cups of finely grated coconut to one cup of hot water (more or less depending on how thick you want the milk to be). Pour the water over the coconut and leave it for about 10 minutes then squeeze the milk out using your hands (try using a tea strainer to separate the last bits of coconut from the milk). Throw away the squeezed coconut.
You could also try using desiccated coconut for this. You'll have to pour more water on it and leave it for a bit longer before squeezing than you would for fresh coconut. The result will very much depend on the quality of the desiccated coconut but won't be as good as the milk from fresh coconut.
Finally, a word about 'creamed coconut'. It comes in a block and, depending on the temperature, it can be rather difficult to hack bits off. I don't like it much. In recipes requiring grated or desiccated coconut, you can substitute a few lumps of this. For those recipes requiring coconut milk, you can make a substitute by mixing about half-and-half creamed coconut and hot water. In my experience, the results are not so good in either case. The dish always seems to be a bit greasy and sticky, though adding the creamed coconut near the end of cooking time minimises this. I use it in emergencies but avoid it if possible.