Bann Nucha Restaurant

So... okay... I haven't been doing restaurant reviews in awhile. Partly because I haven't been going to any new restaurants nowadays and partly because the lighting in restaurants these days are just way too dim for my poor little camera to handle. :P But recently (well, actually, not that recently...), I had lunch at the Bann Nucha Thai restaurant in the mall with a couple of friends, and they had some decent lighting, so... well, here we go. :)

To tell you the truth, I am unfamiliar with Thai cuisine. Even while we were at Bangkok last year, when we ate at this halal restaurant near our hotel (a post about that will be coming up in the next couple of weeks, I "promise"), I didn't order anything fancier than chicken goreng. I know. Tsk, tsk, Ihsan. I already got scolded for ordering chicken goreng in a Thai restaurant in Brunei last time (see here), what more in Bangkok, yeah? :P But in my defense, I did try to see if there was anything else I liked. In particular, I wanted to try authentic pad thai that Hamizah is always raving about... but the restaurant we went to was more of a Malaysian restaurant in Bangkok, so... no pad thai to be found. Oh well, fried chicken it is! :P

But anyway, back to Bann Nucha... this one was definitely Thai oriented. The owner, I think, is Thai. At first, I was very impressed with the service. She greeted everyone personally, always ready with a friendly smile, so I thought... wow. That's nice of her.

But then, she started forcing food choices on everyone. Well, actually, on me, haha. My friends pretty much knew what they wanted, so I was left... and well, originally, I wanted a chicken dish sauteed with basil and chillies, but she was going on and on about the pandan chicken, and basically didn't let me order the basil chicken and forced on me the pandan chicken instead. Well, I thought, okay, she knows better, so fine.

Then the drinks... again with the forcing. Apparently, their sugar cane juice is freshly squeezed and oh so tasty and all natural! Well, what if you don't like sugar cane juice? She still forces it on you anyway! Mind you, I am not that assertive a person. Of course, I could have said no, but right after she talked about it, and my other two friends were like... "Yeah, that sounds nice.", she said "Okay, then, three it is!" and strode right off. Sigh. So oh well. Sugarcane juice it is...

This was Shah's seafood tom yam. :) I know, tom yam is usually red, but this is apparently kampong-style tom yam. Her own recipe, and very authentic. My two friends shared this, and seemed to like it well enough.

And this was my pandan chicken. This was my first time eating pandan chicken, and the pandan smell was kind of off-putting at first, but the chicken itself only had a slight pandan flavour. Other than that, it was really quite flavoursome, which is good. Oily though.

Hamizah's pad thai. Again, different from the usual pad thai. Due to the use of kway teow noodles and soy sauce, it resembled more of a normal fried noodle dish rather than pad thai so Hamizah didn't quite like it so much. When she tried communicating this to the owner lady though, she got told that its a special secret recipe sauce and is very authentic. Okay then.... I myself tasted it, and though I thought it wasn't bad, I am not a pad thai expert so can't vouce for how good it tastes. :)

And this was the ever-so-famous fresh sugarcane juice. Tastes like any other sugarcane juice to me, but whatever. Bit too sweet for my liking, and a bit too sugarcane-y as well, but it is sugarcane, so not surprising, I guess. It was icy cold though, which was nice. My friends seemed to like it too. I just don't like sugarcane juice, is all.

And so... that's it. :) Overall, service was nice if a bit too ... overpowering, or maybe overenthusiastic. Price range was middle-high. Ambience was okay, well-lit by the windows but the view wasn't anything to write home about. :P I probably wouldn't go here again though... If I ever get a craving for Thai food, I want to go to a place where I can order what I want without being pushed around. Those of you who are Thai food fans with a stronger backbone might want to check it out... the food is apparently quite nice (except for the pad thai) with "authentic" recipes, so... yeah. :)

Edit: Although I found the menu selection to have quite a variety of dishes (if only she would just let me order what I want!), I thought the drinks selection was a bit sparse. Which was partly why I accepted the sugarcane thing. There must have been about 5-6 drinks only.

Spicy Oven-Fried Chicken

Back when we were in Bristol, we made use of Tex's Chicken powder a *lot* for dinner. It was very useful, easy and gave a delicious dish everytime. Since it was easily available there, I don't really know why Justin tried to copy it, but copy it he did. And everytime, there would be something missing in his home-made version. The chicken was still rather blah, no matter how much seasoning he claimed to put in.

Fast forward a couple of years, and here I am, in Brunei, with no stock of Tex's chicken powder available anywhere nearby. Of course, there are many many delicious things to eat here, but sometimes, a girl just wants to have fried chicken... but without any of the oil! And so.... I attempted to make my own copy of Tex's chicken. Here we go!

What you need:

One whole spring chicken, cut into smallish pieces
Salt and pepper, for seasoning

Plain flour, roughly 1-1 1/2 cups
Salt, to taste - use plenty! Don't be shy now...
Chicken stock powder, to add extra oomph!
Ground black pepper, to taste
Chilli powder, to taste - to make sure that the spicy taste will come through, make sure to put in enough chilli powder so that the resulting powder is tinged a slight red

What you do:

1. Season the chicken pieces well with salt and black pepper. Allow to marinate for 10-15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the flour coating. Mix all the ingredients with the flour in a bowl. As all ingredients are to taste, I can't really say how much you should put in. But don't be shy with any of them, they will be "diluted" by the flour. Practice makes perfect, so the more you make this, the easier you can estimate how much to put in.
3. Coat the chicken pieces in the seasoned flour. Most people prefer to dip the chicken in egg first, before rolling in the flour, but I have no problems whatsoever with rolling the chicken in the flour straightaway.
4. Bake in a preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through. Use about 180 C to 200 C. I actually use a convection oven, Tabo, as Ibu affectionately calls it, no idea why. This makes it cook much faster, and makes it ever so crispy. :) Serve immediately.
   

This... is... the best! Granted, the seasonings can vary greatly, since I don't actually measure it out... but its usually well salted, and just spicy enough for me to enjoy without feeling like I am being tortured, haha. Unlike other roasted chickens we usually try, this one is very flavoursome, as the flavour is mostly in the flour coating which stays on the chicken... not run down into the gravy, making a yummy gravy but bland chicken. Nope, not here. I do tend to oversalt this though... not a good thing, though its delicious! Hee~

To facilitate this though, you really need to use small-ish pieces of chicken. Gives a bigger flavour to volume ratio. ;) I like to use spring chicken, since its tender and quite small as well. If using a more adult chicken, make sure to chop the thighs and breasts into 2 or 3 pieces, depending on the size. Of course, you can also just use wings or any other chicken part that you like. This recipe translates well to any piece, hence why we usually just use whole chicken chopped into pieces.

I actually like this much better than normal fried chicken. Those of you who know me would know that this is a *very* big achievement. I am very much a fan of anything fried and unhealthy for you. But this dish, baked with no oil at all, beats fried chicken hands down! Of course, its partly due to the *delicious* seasonings. But also, this gets less soggy than fried chicken, as no oil is used. Mind you, the chicken still turns out slightly oily, but that is all from the chicken itself. Natural chicken juices. Haha.

So anyway... this is a favourite in our house, and I hope it will become a favorite at yours too. =) It's something I've been looking for a long time... something that tastes just as good as fried chicken, if not better, but healthier!

Quote of the day: We didn't starve, but we didn't eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was.

Chocolate Caramel Shortbread (Millionaire's Shortbread)

Whoopsie, sorry for the delay in posts. I have been a bit busy, sorting out life and stuff. :)

Anyway, continuing on in our quest to finish up the various random ingredients in our cupboards, the pick of the day this time was a can (actually, several cans) of sweetened condensed milk, i.e. susu manis. Now this one is a particularly hard one to use, as a lot of recipes I know of don't use more than a couple of tablespoonfuls. But eventually, we came across this recipe, which I have been meaning to do anyway. Its only the thought of making shortbread that made me nervous... I can't seem to make shortbread, even though it seems so easy. But anyway, here we go!

What you need:
175g plain flour
125g butter, cut into small pieces
4 tablespoons brown sugar, sifted

Topping:
55g butter
4 tablespoons soft brown sugar - we reduced to only 1 tablespoon
400g canned condensed milk
150g milk chocolate - we used dark chocolate, plus a bit of white chocolate

What you do:

1. Grease a 23-cm/9-inch square cake tin with butter. (We used a 10-inch tin)
2. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and mix to form a firm dough.
3. Press the dough into the base of the prepared tin and prick all over with a fork.
4. Bake in a preheated oven, 190 C, for 20 minutes, until lightly golden. Leave the shortbread to cool in the tin.
5. To make the topping, place the butter, sugar and condensed milk in a non-stick saucepan and cook over gentle heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil.
6. Reduce the heat and cook for 4-5 minutes, until the caramel is pale golden and thick and is coming away from the sides of the pan. Pour the topping over the shortbread base and leave to cool completely.
7. When the caramel topping is firm and cool, melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Spread the melted chocolate over the topping, leave to set in a cool place, then cut the shortbread into squares or fingers.

To my utmost delight, the shortbread here turned out perfectly! It was all nice and golden and crispy, which is just awesome. In fact, the whole thing turned out really well. The shortbread was crisp, the caramel sort of slightly gooey and the chocolate gives the whole thing a nice finish. A great combination of textures and flavours. The only thing that kind of spoilt it was the white chocolate. I can't seem to find good quality white chocolate here... the ones I keep on getting all taste of sugar and oil. Very icky. But we used only a little bit anyway, so that wasn't too big a deal, I suppose.

Some of you might be concerned about the sweetness of the caramel topping. We were too, I mean... a whole can of sweetened condensed milk AND sugar?? That sounds very sweet to me, so we reduced the sugar to one tablespoon. Even so, I was worried that it would be very sweet. But it turned out very well, I thought. Not overwhelmingly sweet. The condensed milk lent a nice creamy flavour to the shortbread. The shortbread itself was not that sweet anyhow. Plus, we used dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, so that cut down on the sweetness a bit. In the end, it was something I enjoyed eating.

In fact, it was something that everybody enjoyed eating! :D (We brought it to yet another family event). Granted, the main part of it was demolished by the little kids, but most "adults" enjoyed it as well, though some did find it too sweet. But with the children? Very very popular. :)

If you like, you can reduce the amount of condensed milk, but I thought it was just fine. Of course, we did use a slightly bigger pan than in the recipe, so the topping was slightly thinner. You also have to keep this in the fridge until right before serving, in Brunei's hot climate, the caramel layer kind of melts if kept out too long. Which makes it harder to cut, once it's soft. But all in all, I think it was a great success. And quite easy to do too! I am giving this the recommended label. :D

Quote of the day: Simply put... everyone has a price, mine is chocolate!