← Nouns Cooking · Thai

Ingredients

• 300 g Green (unripe) papaya, peeled and shredded
• 2 cloves Garlic
• 2 bird’s eye chillies (1 for mild, up to 4)
• 1½ tbsp Palm sugar, grated
• 50 g snake beans or green beans, cut into 3 cm pieces
• 1 tbsp Dried shrimp
• 3 tbsp roasted peanuts
• 2½ tbsp lime juice
• 1½ tbsp Fish sauce
• 1 tsp Tamarind paste (optional)
• 6 Cherry tomatoes, halved

Method

1. For extra crunch, soak the shredded papaya in iced water for 10 min, then drain well.
2. In a large mortar, pound the garlic and chillies to a rough paste. Add the palm sugar and pound until it melts into the paste.
3. Add the beans and bash them lightly just to bruise them. Add the dried shrimp and half the peanuts and pound a few times to crack them.
4. Stir in the lime juice, fish sauce, tamarind and tomatoes, pressing the tomatoes gently to release their juice.
5. Add the papaya and use the pestle in one hand and a spoon in the other to pound gently and toss, folding the dressing through. Taste and adjust: it should be sharply sour, then salty, sweet and hot.
6. Pile onto a plate with the remaining peanuts and serve at once, ideally with sticky rice and grilled chicken.

Tips

• Contains peanuts and shellfish (dried shrimp and fish sauce).
• No green papaya? Shredded carrot, cucumber or kohlrabi make a good stand-in. No big mortar? Mash the paste in a bowl with a rolling pin.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

Rachel Cooks Thai Marion's Kitchen Hot Thai Kitchen