Spice Up Your Life



Green Papaya Salad



On one of my visits to Bangkok I visited the Baipai Cooking School. If I have the time I like to try out a local cookery class. It’s a great way getting an understanding of local ingredients and flavours http://www.baipai.com/ The class was fun and throughly enjoyed by all.

One of the extremely popular dishes in Thailand is Som Tam, or Green Papaya Salad. Everyone has their own version. As street food it’s light and delicious in the heat of the day. Here's the recipes I learnt, with one or two minor changes to allow for ingredients availibility in South Africa.

INGREDIENTS:

Serves 1

50 g peeled and shredded young papaya. ( If you can’t find papaya you can use green mango, cucumber or shredded white cabbage)

2 cherry tomatoes – halved

2 french beans – cut into pieces ( In Thailand Snake beans are used)

1 Tbs roasted peanuts

1 Tbs of dried shrimp ( I have had difficulty find this in Cape Town so I use a heaped teaspoon of shrimp paste which is readily available from Asian stores)

3 Cloves of garlic

1-2 Thai chillies (depending on just how hot you like it!)

1 Tbs Fish sauce

1 Tbs Lime Juice

1 Tbs tamarind paste

1 Tbs palm sugar

3 Medium sized prawns ( deheaded, shelled, deveined, and cooked)

METHOD:

Put garlic and chillies in a pestle and mortar and pound roughly.

Add dried shrimp (or shrimp paste) and roasted peanuts and gently pound. (you need texture and don’t want the peanuts to be too fine)

Add fish sauce, lime juice, tamarind paste and palm sugar. Mix well until the sugar has dissolved.

Then add beans, tomatoes and papaya and pound gently until everything is combines.

Toss in the prawns and mix gently and serve.

Note: The “dressing” ingredients are just a recommended guide. Taste as you go. You might prefer more sweetness, more acidity, heat or salt. Mostly enjoy the process and the fantastic explosion of flavours.

Now that it's braai(barbeque) season leave the prawns out and use white cabbage to turn the recipe into a spicy slaw with a difference!