Passport & Plate - Papaya Salad
Thailand | Saturday, January 25, 2014 | 4 photos
Ingredients
Shredded Green Papaya (1 Handful)
Shredded Carrot (1/2 Handful)
Long Bean - 1
Fish Sauce - 1-2 tbsp.
Palm Sugar - 1/2 - 1 tbsp.
Lime - 1
Tomato - 1/2 tomato
Crunchy Eggplant - 1
Dried Shrimp - 1 tsp.
Peanuts - 1 tbsp.
Bird's Eye Chilies - 2 - 4 (depends on how much spice you like)
Garlic - 5-6 cloves
How to prepare this recipeUsing a vegetable grater, shred the green papaya & carrots. Set aside. Cut tomato in half, then cut the half into quarters.
Using a mortar & pestal, crush the chilies and garlic to a pulp. Once you have a paste like consistency, add the crunchy eggplant & long bean to mortar. Pound all ingredients well.
Add the sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, tomato, peanuts & dried shrimp to mortar. Mix well, making sure the sugar dissolves into the mixture.
Add the shredded papaya and carrots to mortar and toss all ingredients together. Spoon the salad onto a plate and serve as is or add a protein, such as chicken or fish, on top.
*The salad should be well balanced, with a slight sweet, spicy, salty & sour flavor.
The story behind this recipeThis past December, I traveled to Southeast Asia and met a friend for the first 10 days to travel through Cambodia & Thailand together. During our time in Cambodia, we came across a refreshing & tasty salad, called papaya salad. We loved the use of raw veggies and spice with a touch of sweetness. This became a staple in our meals, switching from green papaya salad to banana leaf salad, some with fish or chicken, others just salad goodness.
As we moved on to our next country, Thailand, we were offered an array of noodle and curry dishes. While these were all worth writing home about, they can be a bit heavy and we found ourselves yearning for those tasty salads we had enjoyed in Cambodia. To our pleasant surprise, as we traveled through northern Thailand, this was back on the menu.
My friend, Ashley, and I were ecstatic! Being foodies and lovers of all things veggie, we had to learn how to make papaya salad so we could recreate it back in the states. We signed up for a cooking class and walla, we were in the kitchen, hands on, learning how to recreate this tasty dish.
So you are probably thinking, big deal, you learned how to make salad. The great thing about this dish was it was a memory of our travels through two countries and allowed us to eat family style when we dined out, as we both wanted salad but not as our full meal. It also taught me to expand my thoughts on what a salad could consist of. I mean, fish sauce? Dried shrimp? I would never think to add that to my everyday salads back home. And palm sugar, what is that? It's an interesting paste like sugar that cuts through the sourness from the lime and the kick of the chilies to meld the flavors of this salad concoction together.
Our cooking class added a nice touch to our journey together.
