Tuesday, May 10, 2011.
Pad Prik King.
The Marys went out to lunch at one of their same old places, VooDoo BBQ. I've had quite enough of that in the past ten weeks, what with my eating tied so closely to theirs. But Mary Ann figured that was the case, and offered to pick up something from somewhere else.
I'll bet it was a little traumatic for Mary Leigh to walk into the Thai Chili and order pad prik king with chicken , hot but not Thai hot. I knew she would call back asking whether she got that right. "Pad frikking?" she asked. She may have harbored the notion that I was pulling her leg. No, it's pad prik king, with a "p" as in "prick your finger." My brain brought up George Carlin, whose birthday is Thursday. (I knew that from having written that day's Food Almanac this morning.) And his standup comedy routine: "You can prick your finger, but you can't finger your NO NO NO!"
"Okay, I found it," Mary Leigh said. Somehow, she got it in her head that you can't order anything that's not expressly on a menu.
I haven't been able to get the Marys interested in Thai food. But Mary Ann was more intrigued than usual by this dish. It had her favorite visual aspect: a plate loaded with vegetables. Pad prik king is a classic Thai stir-fry, soaking in more sauce than you'd get in a comparable Chinese dish. (Although most Thai restaurants tone down the sauce for us roundeyes. For themselves, it comes out almost like a soup.) Green beans and carrots carry a lot of weight. Onions and peppers are in the middle ground with the meat. Garlic and ginger bring up the rear, in a brown sauce. They made it exactly as hot as I like it. Mary Ann found the pepper heat over the top, but she liked it anyway.
I'd call Thai Chili's version of this dish better than Thai Thai's or Thai Spice's (but I don't tell MA that, because both of those are her advertising clients), but not quite as good as at Thai Orchid in Slidell. I've been to Thai Chili six or seven times in the past year, but for some reason never wrote a review of it. Good place.
The Marys went to the movies this evening. I asked them to bring home some popcorn. I wasn't expecting the tub of popcorn they brought. I hadn't eaten any supper, and so as I worked on into the night I ate about three-fourths of the tub. I recalled that Ken Lacour, the co-owner of Dakota, lost a lot of weight by just eating popcorn whenever he was hungry. But eating the popcorn made me feel my blood pressure rising. That was nothing compared with what the popcorn would do to me tomorrow.
Thai Chili. Covington: 1102 N US 190. 985-809-0180.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
