Green Papaya Salad

The ultimate staple of Thai cuisine (or so many would have you believe): Green Papaya salad.  Like many Thai dishes, it is a balance of sweet and sour, redolent with the heady richness of shrimp, and accented with the heat of chili peppers.  

If you're a vegetarian who doesn't eat fish, it's still a lovely fragrant salad without shrimp.   

Green Papaya Salad

1/2 tsp coarse sea salt 

5 cloves garlic

4 red scuds/birds eye chilies 

1 tbsp dried shrimp

2 tbsps peanuts

12 grape tomatoes

20 green beans 

2 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp tamarind + 1/4 cup boiling water

2.5 tbsps palm sugar (1/8 lb)

2 tbsps fish sauce

1/2 green small papaya ~2 cups shredded

The tamarind paste that I'm able to secure comes in a brick and it would be hard to fully incorporate into the salad.  I usually add it to 1/4 cup of boiling water in a tall wide glass, and when I'm ready to add it, I shock it into a slush with my hand blender.

Add the salt to the bottom of your mortar and pestle and use it to grind the garlic into a paste.  Next add in the scuds and shrimp, pounding them into a coarse paste.  Crush in the peanuts before adding in the tomatoes and green beans.  Beat the tomatoes and beans enough to bruise them heavily, but not so much that you mash them into a paste.  Add in the lime, tamarind, fish sauce, and palm sugar (make sure this is not too chunky, I usually pre-mash it with the mortar and pestle).  Sear off your shrimp in a pan and combine everything together in a bowl.

Serve immediately, these flavours do not need to blend.  Leftovers and long-standing salad will become wilted.

Help!  My mortar and pestle was a Christmas gift and I can barely smash up peppercorns in it!

If you're lacking a good mortar and pestle (as many of us are), your green papaya salad making ability will be greatly hampered.  The alternative is to finally chop the garlic, chilies, shrimp, and crush the peanuts.  Mix them with the lime juice, tamarind, palm sugar, and fish sauce and let stand for 15 minutes to allow the flavours to blend.  Smash the tomatoes and green beans in a bowl with whatever you have handy to that purpose.

Too Spicy, Not Spicy Enough?

As always, remove seeds to make things less spicy, leave them in to make it more spicy.  And you can always increase/decrease the quantity of peppers.