This recipe is from my mother-in-law who is Thai and also a great cook and cooking instructor. This is a traditional Thai salad made with green papaya. It has simple ingredients, but involves a lot of grating. My husband’s parents insisted on grating everything by hand, but using a food processor would have cut down significantly on the preparation time.
The key ingredient is the green papaya. These can most likely only be found in an Asian grocery store. And you must make sure it is dark green, which means it is unripe. If it is too ripe you won’t be able to grate it. The inside will be a light green color (unlike the ripe papayas that are yellow). Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of the uncut fruit. We found a really big papaya, probably the size of a large butternut squash, so we only needed 1 for this recipe. They come in smaller mango-sized fruits, so you might need to use more if you can only find these. To store the grated papaya if not serving immediately, submerge the gratings in cold water and store in the refrigerator. These will last this way for 3-4 days. Drain well before using.
The carrot was shredded with a potato peeler, but a grater would have worked well too. The green beans were cut into small pieces using an angled cut, just to look pretty. Tomatoes were cut in half lengthwise using a serrated tomato knife, which might seem like an extraneous kitchen tool, but it really makes slicing tomatoes easy.
Depending on your tolerance for heat, use a mortar & pestle to crush together the 1-4 Thai chilies and garlic. De-seed the chilies to make it less spicy. Also, depending on your tolerance for fish sauce, add more or less of this.
Ingredients
makes 6 servings
- 6 cups green papaya, peeled & grated (1 large or 2-3 small)
- 1 carrot, peeled & grated
- 2 cups green beans, chopped small
- 1 package cherry/grape tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise
- unsalted peanuts
Dressing:
- 1/2 cup lime juice
- zest from 1 lime
- 1-4 thai chilies
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 t. sugar
- 1/2 t. salt
- dash of fish sauce
Grate and chop all ingredients as noted and toss together in large salad bowl. Zest 1 lime and then juice enough limes for ~1/2 cup of juice. Add zest to the juice along with sugar, salt, fish sauce, and mortar & pestled chilies and garlic. Mix well. Adjust with sugar, salt, and fish sauce depending on desired taste.
Right before serving, add dressing to ingredients and mix together well.
