This is a super spicy dish…very deceiving too because it’s a cold salad and looks so refreshing, it makes you think that it’s purpose is to cool down your palate from all of the other spicy dishes your eating. Not so…this is one of the spiciest of them all! Of course, you can dial back on the chilis to make it less spicy, but then it wouldn’t be authentic ;)

 

The recipe is adapted from the one we received at Siam Rice Thai Cookery School in Chiang Mai, Thailand


100g grated green papaya (you can also make this with carrots or cucumbers…but I would squeeze some liquid out of the cucumbers after shredding them)
3 small red Thai chilis, stems pulled off
3-5 small garlic cloves, thin skin on
1 tomato sliced into small pieces
3 Chinese long beans cut into 1” pieces (green beans would work too)
30g roasted peanuts
2 TBS fish sauce
2 tsp palm sugar (if you can’t find this I would use 1 tsp dark brown sugar)
juice from 1 lime
crushed peanuts and/or dried shrimp for garnish

Put garlic, chili & peanuts in a large mortar and pound together to form a paste (you want those chilis in small pieces!). If you don’t have a mortar & pestle, pulse in a food processor

Add fish sauce, sugar, lime juice and mix/pestle until sugar dissolves. Add papaya and tomato and mix well.  Top with crushed peanuts and/or dried shrimp and serve