Sunday, August 29, 2010. Five. Still Raining. Thai Chili. This is the fifth anniversary of the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. President Obama was in town a couple of days ago to eat a shrimp poor boy at the Parkway Bakery, and to congratulate the city on its recovery. While there are people who still haven't returned to normal life, in the big picture New Orleans has made it all the way back. The population of the metropolitan area is almost certainly above what it was before the storm. My restaurant count stands at 1113 (and I have a bunch more to add this week). Very few major institutions failed to return.
The experience of the storm and the year after was so intense that I thought we'd talk about it forever, the way people who went through World War II do. But I'm not so sure of that now.
I am sure that if Katrina came again it wouldn't cause the disaster it did five years ago. I am not one of the apparent (but, I suspect, not real) majority of people who completely mistrust all experts. What I know about flood control in New Orleans (and it's always been a hobby of mine) tells me that we're in good shape.
Of course, there's always The Bigger One.
Dinner at the Thai Chili, a well-hidden restaurant in a sideways strip mall, in front of the Lowe's on Causeway Boulevard. I was the only one in the dining room. This is typical of past visits. But six take-out orders were picked up during my meal. I wonder why so many people regard Asian food as being worthy only of styrofoam containers. Could it be that they're uncomfortable dealing with the language barrier? Or with the exotic environment? It must be something strong to make people put up with the degradations in flavor engendered by the ride home.
Thai Chili seems to have expanded its menu. I started with a rice-paper-wrapped spring roll with shrimp and noodles--more Vietnamese in style than Thai, and very good. Then, another sampling of pad prik king, a dish that fascinated me at the Thai Orchid two weeks ago. This one was much like the one I had last week at Thai Thai, the sauce redolent of some musky flavor I couldn't quite make out. It's something like orange juice and meat. Or maybe pineapple. This version was made with chicken. At Thai Thai I blamed the unusual flavor on the beef. But that's clearly not the answer.
A little research turned up an ingredient I never heard of before: prik king curry paste. That makes five kinds of Thai curry paste on my mental list. (Red, green, Panang, and musaman are the others). I'll bet many more may be out there in cans and jars. I found a Thai company that makes prik king curry. They say it contains dried red chili, shallots, garlic, galanga (a ginger-like root, common in Thai cookery), lemongrass, kaffir lime and generic "spices." All recipes show the unifying themes are the prik king curry and generous inclusion of green beans.
I was unable to get this information from any of the three restaurants where I sampled the dish. Maybe that's why people only do take-out from these restaurants. They're shy about asking questions, and even when they do they don't often get good answers.
Thai Chili. Covington: 1102 N. US 190. 985-809-0180. Thai.
