Thai cooking: Papaya salad
7 years ago,I was still in Japan and never had Mexican food,Thai food,Vietnamese food.. now,came over here,I see so many fresh produce,spice,herbs and I maybe having too much fun playing with it. I like to try new thing with my twist when it comes to cooking. I like to be creative with it. I cook many different kinds of dishes and,when I find it so yummy,I tend to file the recipe in recipe file and next time when I make it,I tweak it my way. When I have my favorite flavor,I like to use the key ingredients and whip up something nice.
My first experience with Thai dish is probably about 6 years ago. I worked for Airlines and, co-worker from Thailand brought Thai dish. It was very aromatic and spicy dish but,it was very delicious. Then, we had a chance to try out Thai restaurant and,experienced more Thai food. Pad-Thai, Penang curry,Thai dumpling,Thai tea, Thai Coffee etc etc..
Japanese,Chinese,Vietnamese,Thai,and Indian dishes looks very complicated to make it but it’s really not that complicated. Some of the dishes like spring roll or dumpling can be time-consuming but not complicated to make it. In fact,it maybe fun to make with whole family. It’s fun.
This time, I like to introduce “Papaya salad”. I leaned from Thai lady.This is very spicy but cannot stop eating.Very addictive flavor. I tweaked a little because some of the ingredients were not something I always had in hand.
Obviously,key ingredients here will be green papaya. It is very big unripe papaya. One green papaya maybe about 1 feet in size. You can find it in Asian store. If you did not find one,you can use boiled green beans,chopped lettuce, half cut cherry tomatoes,shredded carrots,bean sprouts,shredded cucumber etc anything you would use for your salad is fine. One green papaya gives you lots of shredded papaya.So, it is good salad dish for party or when you bring large number of people to your house.
1> Prepare vegetable/papaya for salad
2>In the sauce pan, add 1/4cup of fish sauce and 2tbs brown sugar(if you go authentic,use palm sugar), and dissolve the sugar with heat
3>chop 1 clove of garlic and Thai chili peppers (I use 5-6),and add them to the sauce pan
4>Add 1 fresh lime juice, 5-6 of cherry tomatoes cut into half to the pan,squash the tomato a little with potato masher
5>(if you go by authentic,add 2tbs of dry shrimp powder. You can find them at Asian store)
6>Taste the dressing and if it was ok,pour it over salad before eating. I like to add lime zest over the salad too.
Here is my take. When I cook fish,I sometimes cook it with salad dressing. It may sound strange but it goes really well. For example,last time when I cooked fish,I just skillet flounder fish fillet (I think white meat fish will be best for this) with salt & Pepper.Then just about done in a minute,I added splash of salad dressing and finished cooking fish in it. Salad dressing does not have to be just for salad. You can use it for marinade or cook with it.
Enjoy! For lime wedge,toss it into disposal in the kitchen sink. It becomes kitchen disposal freshener.
