simbal

Southeast Asian Kitchen + Bar

Coconut flan, tamarind caramel, coconut snow

At simbal we don’t use any dairy on the savory portion of our menu.  Many people have asked us why and there’s two main reasons.  First, as chefs it’s natural for us to revert back to our training and use ingredients and techniques we are familiar with, which is a good thing but it can be restricting when we fall back on it out of comfort when we get to a roadblock in creativity and don’t know what else to do.  We don’t use dairy because it can become a crutch to cooking when we rely on it in order to make food delicious.  Dairy is something we love to eat outside of the restaurant but not cooking with at the restaurant forces us to be more creative and look for new solutions.  Secondly, cream, butter, and cheese enhance food but is it possible to make delicious food without using dairy?  We need to look no further than the food culture of China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, the list goes on.  Anyone who has enjoyed the cuisine from these cultures can attest that delicious food and be made without dairy.  So then it’s clearly possible to make delicious food without dairy if billions of people eat well without dairy.  Which brings to question our perspective and our subconscious reliance on our comfort zone when it comes to cooking.  

 

We are always on the hunt and lookout for recipes that don’t utilize dairy.  One day while reading The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adrià we came across a recipe for coconut flan. That was enough to spark an interest, a couple days later we tested the recipe and it worked great.  Some tweaks we made were to replace shredded coconut with fresh coconut from the coconuts we use to braise our pork belly.  The next question was what else is needed to make the flan a complete dish.  Since flan is rich from eggs and coconut milk we wanted something acidic to cut the richness.  Caramel is a natural component in flan, tamarind is a common ingredient to incorporate acid.  Tamarind caramel turned out to be a perfect companion to accentuate the caramel in the flan while cutting the richness.  Equipment limitations inhibit us from making ice cream and sorbets so a work around was needed.  Granita requires nothing more than a freezer and a fork, both of which we fortunately have.  The most logical pairing is coconut granita since the temperature contrast would not make the coconut flavor overwhelming.  The aim of this dish is to be familiar, fun, and refreshing.  Southeast Asian cultures generally favor fruit for dessert over heavy and rich desserts we are accustomed to in western cultures.  Our hope is that dish bridges the gap by making a typically rich dessert light and refreshing.