Thai-style green papaya salad

Green papayas have a slightly sour taste with a wonderful crunch. They are used in cuisines across Asia, usually in salads or curries. They are available in select Asian stores or at most grocery stores in India. This salad pops with flavours from the excellent tomato-based dressing. The hint of the sea from the dried shrimp and fish sauce adds wonderful nuances to the salad.

I sometimes cannot find, or run out of dried shrimp, so I improvise by taking 1-2 small shrimp and wrapping them in foil with a light spray of oil and roasting for 4-5 minutes to cook the shrimp. This method allows me to create a suitable substitute for the whole dried shrimp or bottled shrimp paste. For a vegan or vegetarian version of this salad, do not add the fish sauce or shrimp. The salad dressing has enough complexity not to miss their presence.

I also tend to peel the green papaya for some unknown reason. No recipe calls for this, but I do this to remove some of the slight bitterness present in the peel. I have started going to this massive volume on Thai cooking more frequently. It is packed full of recipes from the land and culture that prides itself on its cuisine. This book definitely steps out of the ordinary, a must for any cook who wants everything Thai in their kitchen and on their table. Occasionally, in this book, I come across a recipe where an ingredient is hard to find, but with over 500 recipes, there is much more to cook.

For more wonderful recipes from this cookbook, click here.

Ingredients:

3 bird’s eye chiles, or to taste

5 cloves of garlic

3/4 oz/20 g green beans, cut into 1-inch lengths

2 tomatoes, cut into small pieces

1 tablespoon palm or soft brown sugar

1 tablespoon dried shrimp

1 tablespoon roasted peanuts

1 tablespoon fish sauce

4 oz/120 g green papaya, shredded

1 tablespoon roasted peanuts, pounded

2 limes, cut into wedges

Pound the chiles and garlic together in a mortar with a pestle, then add the beans and lightly crush them. Add the tomatoes, sugar, dried shrimp, lime juice, lime wedges, and fish sauce to the mortar and gently mix together until the sugar has dissolved. Add the papaya and mix well.

Serve with the pounded roasted peanuts scattered on top and additional wedges of lime on the side.