Cooking Crusade

I love throwing together easy, simple ingredients to make a delicious dinner for myself and my fiance.

On this particular night, I wanted to make something Moroccan spiced to go with my new cous cous craze and this is kind of what I came up with and Mike and I were pretty pleased with the results. Definitely going to keep this one around for time to come! I love throwing things in the oven and then coming back later and dinner is pretty much done. It also gives you an opportunity to clean up all of the mess that you created (which I tend to do quite a lot) in the process.

Ok! Lets get started.

Ingredients: Serves 2.
4 chicken thighs (this makes a big dinner! if you are a girl, like me, you may just want 1 chicken thigh for yourself. keep the remaining in the fridge to slice for a sanger. brill!)
2 teaspoons of moroccan spice
1 teaspoon of garlic powder (optional)
1/2 a cup of plain flour
some olive oil.

Line a baking tray with some baking paper and preheat the oven to about 180 deg C. In a small bowl, blend together flour and spices.

Rub your chicken thighs with about a teaspoon of oil or less per thigh.

Dip each thigh into flour/spice mixture until thoroughly coated and place on baking tray.

Repeat until all chicken is coated.

Chicken after abou 1 hour – golden brown.

Bake in a hot oven for about 1 hour, or until golden and crispy. Occasionally turn then about every 20-30 minutes to evenly brown them.

You could take them out at 1 hour and they would be fine, but if you have some extra time, 1.5 hours turns the thigh meat into a dark golden, lovely colour and the meat literally falls apart.

Chicken after 1.5 hours – dark golden brown and.. amazing.

Serve with cous cous and steamed greens and most of all.. Enjoy!

xx

Christine

I’ve been coming to the Thai Pothong for years now. I’ve been here for several birthdays, or just a nice night out in Newtown for dinner with friends. I think that it’s fair to say that it’s been giving pretty consistent results throughout the years. The food is good, the restaurant atmosphere is nice (with the most gorgeous Thai decor) and the service is highly efficient.

One of my favorite things about the Thai Pothong (aside from the fact that it’s the closest Thai restaurant to Newtown Station and its enormouse size – it used to be three separate shops;) is how efficiently they seat big crowds. I’ve turned up here on busy Saturday nights with a crowd of 8+ people and they have always managed to seat us at a decently sized table with no booking. What’s more, even though the restaurant is always busy with customers, you are constantly getting excellent customer service – water and rice being constantly refilled by the friendly staff. Customer service is one of those things that you don’t realise is missing until you’re somewhere it isn’t… It’s then that you realise what a big difference it makes to your dining experience – it can often mean the difference between an unpleasant night or an entirely pleasant one.

The only downside about this place is that it’s not the cheapest place for Thai that you will find in Newtown, but considering the rest of the perks you get (i.e. the service and comfy space in a nice air conditioned room) is a considerable trade-off. The old adage you get what you pay for certainly applies here, but hey, who’s complaining?

I still remember my first visit here with a group of church friends. We played a prank on one of my oldest and dearest friends by singing “Happy Birthday” to her when she returned from the bathroom (much to her surprise). We managed to get a large chunk of the rest of the restaurant singing along with us. We even ended up ordering the special ‘Birthday Dessert’ (fruit and ice cream) which compelled everyone to sing again (one dude on the table adjacent to us managed to remember her name while singing and then turned to me and said brightly “I remembered her name!”) Good times. I’m pretty sure I have that on film somewhere…

The classic chicken cashew nut (Gai pad mamoung himmaparn) $17.95 – Chicken with cashew nuts, chili jam, water chestnuts, lotus seeds and shallots

Roast Duck Salad (Pla Ped Yang) $20.90 – Sliced roast duck with spanish onions, coriander, roasted ground coconut, mint leaves and lemon juice, yum!

Another Thai classic – Massaman Curry, except this time with lamb! Instead of the usual beef..
Gang massaman gae, $19.95 – a mild lamb curry with roasted peanuts, thai herbs and crispy onions

I ordered this one, mostly because I’m a big fan of mock-duck products (one of my faves is a brand called “Lamyong”). Another one of my fave restaurants is called Green’s Gourmet (another Newtown one, although they also have a restaurant in St. Leonards). Wasn’t the greatest dish of the night and nowhere near as good as the stuff Green’s Gourmet brings out. If you want to try good roast vegetarian duck, go to Green’s!
Vegetables with Roast Vegetarian duck  (pad ped ja) $16.95 – Seasonal stir fried vegies with roast vegetarian duck

To summarise… Thai Pothong is a great restaurant to visit with a big group of friends for a special night out. Good food, good service and its nice and comfy in there! You’re looking at about a meal cost of around $25-$30 (this is including an entree/main and of course, depends on what you order). They also have a wide range of Vegetarian dishes and adjustable banquet options if those suit you.

Oh and if you’re visiting the Thai Pothong, you can’t help but take a gawk at some of the cool Alien theme sculptures in the window.. So cool!

Check out the Thai Pothong website here. You can check out menus, prices, location and all kinds of other handy information online at their site.

Ah, salad.

How difficult I find you to eat. This probably sounds terrible, but I’m really not a big fan of salad. I know I SHOULD because it’s HEALTHY and what not, but I find a lot of salad leaves quite bitter and really difficult to eat (rocket, you know that i’m looking at you.) I’m also not a big fan of the texture of salad leaves, either.
I guess the only successful way I’ve been able to eat salad is by dressing it up with tasty extra bits to help give it a bit of life.
Of course, I’m not talking about caeser salads, which sadly, are not *technically* salad (well i guess they sort of are, but they shouldn’t be allowed the title of salad, because in my mind, salad is synonymous with ‘healthy’, which caeser salads are unfortunately not.) lol.

The first time I had this salad, it was made by a friend at bible study. When I first tasted it, all I could think was ‘what IS this amazing stuff?’ and continued to eat my way through a big plate of it. After bible study had ended, I asked my friend for the recipe and made it again today.

And here it is, in all its glory.

Krystel’s Salad:
(Originally, the walnuts weren’t caramelised, but I decided that it had to be done.. results were successful. Although I’m not making any claims that caramelised walnuts are healthy, ohhh no.)
Walnuts (about 1/2 – 1 cup, depending on your mood. That’s what I like about salads. You really don’t have to worry too much about measurements … it’s always dependent on my mood..)
A couple tablespoons of brown sugar, butter and a good splash of water (to caramelise the nuts.)
Salad leaves
One pear
Good parmesan cheese (the real stuff, not that fake stuff you use for pasta… y’all know what i’m talking about.) I reckon this would also go good with goats’ cheese, but that’s left up to future testing..

Dressing : (Now this didn’t turn out the best for me. I used three garlic cloves, the juice and zest of one lemon and about 1/3 cup of olive oil and seasoning. I used waay too much olive oil. Need to figure out good ratios for this, but for the meantime..)
Garlic, grated
Lemon juice
Olive Oil
Seasoning
If anyone knows of good ratios for this, I’m all ears!

Caramelise the walnuts.
Toast walnuts in a non stick pan over high heat. Add the butter and brown sugar and melt. Add the splash of water and cook until it caramelises.. make sure you watch it because I nearly burnt mine. Cool on wax paper and bash them up later with a rolling pin to crush them a bit and to make sure they don’t stick together. (Cover with wax paper before so you don’t get toffee on your rolling pin.)
Make sure you don’t eat them all before they hit the salad…. They are damned addictive. This would probably work well with other nuts as well.

I wish I had the ability to make this picture appear more romantic, but.. I just can’t. Its nuts, butter and sugar in a pan and that’s all it ever will be.

Core and slice pear.
Probably best to do this with a mandoline, but I just used a knife. Super thin slices are best, so that it’s not too overwhelming but adds a nice sweetness.

Prepare dressing.
Grate garlic, juice lemon and zest the skin. Mix together with olive oil.

Wash salad leaves.

Grate your parmesan.

Layer.
In a big salad bowl, layer your salad leaves, nuts, pear slices and cheese and give a final toss. Mix up your dressing and toss that in there as well.

Yum! Eat me today. I will fill your tummy with happy and make you feel happy, for you are eating a semi-healthy salad! Woo! Go you!