Som tam

Green papaya pounded rather than tossed, so the shreds bruise and take up the dressing.

Shellfish. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, shellfish.

Ingredients

• 500 g green papaya, in long shreds
• 4 garlic cloves
• 6 bird's eye chillies
• 2 tablespoons dried shrimp
• 60 g long beans, in 3 cm lengths
• 2 tomatoes, in wedges
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 4 tablespoons lime juice
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 40 g peanuts, roasted

Method

1. POUNDED, NOT TOSSED, and that is the entire dish. A mortar bruises the papaya so it goes limp at the edges and drinks the dressing, while staying crunchy in the middle. Shaken in a bowl, the dressing sits in the bottom and the papaya tastes of nothing.
2. Shred the papaya long and thin, 3 mm, with a shredder or by chopping the surface repeatedly with a knife and slicing down. Grated, it goes to mush under the pestle.
3. Rinse the shreds in cold water and drain them hard. The sap is bitter.
4. Garlic and chillies in the mortar first, pounded to a rough paste. Then the dried shrimp, broken up.
5. Palm sugar, fish sauce and lime in, stirred with the pestle until the sugar has gone. Taste it NOW -- this is the dressing and it is the last moment you can judge it on its own.
6. Long beans in, pounded three or four times only, until they split.
7. Papaya and tomatoes in. Now POUND AND FOLD TOGETHER: a light strike with the pestle, a turn with a spoon, for about a minute. You are bruising, not crushing.
8. Peanuts folded through at the very end so they stay whole.
9. Eat within ten minutes. It weeps water and goes soft after that, which is why it is made one bowl at a time.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Thailand · All recipes