Thai Green Papaya Salad (Som Tum) 🌶 🇹🇭

 

    

This exotic salad epitomises the genius of Thai cuisine, harnessing a balance between a complexity of flavours, using ingredients that give you different textures in every mouthful.  I was given a green papaya that had been knocked off someone's tree during a recent storm.  After keeping it inside a paper bag with a banana for over a week, I knew it was unlikely to ripen and turned it into this amazing salad which is a meal in itself.  You'll need a julienne peeler to finely shred the creamy white papaya flesh, and a mortar and pestle to pound a few ingredients together.  I've got a flat-bottomed Indonesian mortar and pestle which has served me well over the years. There are many types of them.   Invest in one that catches your fancy, it is a handy tool in the kitchen.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

• ½ cup roasted unsalted peanuts
• 100g / 3½ oz snake beans or green beans, trimmed, cut into 5cm /2" lengths
• 200g / 7 oz cherry or grape tomatoes, any colour, cut in half
• 400g / 14oz green papaya flesh, finely shredded*
• ¼ cup Thai basil leaves

*Peel the green skin off the papaya using a vegetable peeler.  Cut in half and remove the seeds using a spoon before shredding it with a julienne peeler.  Shredded papaya can be kept in a ziplock bag in the fridge for a few days.

Dressing:

• 1 tablespoon garlic, roughly chopped
• 1-2 red bird eye chillies, roughly chopped (use more or less according to taste)
• 3 tablespoons dried shrimps
• ½ cup granulated palm sugar*
• ¼ cup fish sauce
• ¼ cup lime juice

*Palm sugar usually comes in blocks and need to be grated.  I use the granulated type to save time and effort.

METHOD

1. Crush peanuts in the mortar and pestle to break them up a little.  Set aside in a small dish.
2. In the mortar and pestle, place garlic and chillies.  Pound into a paste.  Add shrimps and pound to crush them a little into the paste.
3. Stir in palm sugar, lime and fish sauce.  Mix to combine until sugar dissolves.  Pour dressing into a large mixing bowl.  
4. Place beans in the mortar and pestle.  Pound to bruise until the beans slit open and soften a little.  Add to the dressing in the bowl.
5. Crush tomatoes with your hand, a handful at a time, to release some juice over the bowl, then toss them all in.
6. Add the shredded papaya to the bowl.  Toss all ingredients together with a pair of tongs.
7. Once everything is coated in the dressing, serve immediately.  Pile the salad up onto plates.  Spoon over some dressing.  Sprinkle crushed peanuts on top and garnish with basil leaves.

Source (with adaptations): recipetineats