One of my favorite dishes of Thai culture is the Green Papaya Salad or Som Tum as called in Thai. An easy dish to make in a short amount of time, you can come over to my house and watch me prepare this before you. It’s a very popular dish in Thailand and in my household. You can eat this complex salad with sticky rice and other dishes such as laab, a ground chicken dish or beef salad. Also there are different types of this Green Papaya salad. Some consist of dried shrimp or salted crab with peanuts. It’ll depend on what you like in your salad. With the ingredients, you can omit some or substitute with what you like.
To efficiently make this salad you would need a clay mortar. Wooden pestle and a spatula. It helps ground the ingredients together. Simple ingredients is needed such as shredded green papaya, green beans, garlic, palm sugar, lime, dried shrimp, cherry tomatoes , fish sauce and chili pepper for spice. You could also add roasted peanuts if you’d like. Smash a clove of garlic first. Then add green beans and halved cherry tomatoes. Pound a few times just to bruise the beans and get the juice out of the tomatoes. Add chili peppers and crush them just enough to release the hotness. Mix the green papaya, dried shrimp and roasted peanuts, fish sauce, lime juice and palm sugar. With pestle, push the mixture down into the mortar and with the spatula so it[‘ll mix well. After its down and you added all your ingredients you like in your salad you can serve with sticky rice and a silver of cabbage. Green beans and Thai basil. I recommend eating the salad with these side plates because if you’re salad is too spicy, you eat the vegetable to help with the intense spic of the salad.
When I went to Thailand for the summer, I was able to witness some family friends of mine make this dish for me and that’s where I was taught as well. Simple complex dish to make and delicious to eat.
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| Enjoying Som Tum In Thailand |
