Pow!: Green Papaya Salad (Som Tam)
Bold Flavors in Balance, A Pounding Headache, Insights from Escoffier, Night Market Fire
Hi! Thanks for continuing to welcome my newsletter into your inbox. Here’s Issue #38. Special thanks to all who have paid for a subscription. Paid subscribers recently received my detailed Paris Notebook, and I’m hard at work on the next of my city guides, with NYC, Tel Aviv, and Milan, currently in development. Click the button below to subscribe today!
In the meantime, for your listening pleasure, a new episode of my What’s Burning podcast drops today. You won’t want to miss my interview with Lilly Jan, a senior lecturer at the famed Cornell Hotel School (my alma mater), whom I met in the Ithaca dog park. No, seriously, Finn and Milo are buddies. In addition to Lilly’s insights on how we need to revamp the food and beverage industry to combat sexism and work more intentionally toward diversity and inclusion—a good place to start, she will tell you, is revamping our hospitality and culinary education curriculae—you’ll want to listen to the only person in the world with a master’s degree in soup dumplings. Not kidding.
Now, onto Issue #38: som tam. No, this is not that salad newsletter (see Department of Salad). Which is not to say I am not a lover of salads. I like to have a salad with almost every meal. In fact, at this time of year, one of the biggest challenges is finding a satisfying salad when there’s almost nothing in the farmer’s market to work with (potato and wool salad, anyone?) and the grocery store produce aisles are sad. I’ve been eating so much of the chicory family I think I may be turning into a new variety of radicchio.
And so, this week we are going back to Thailand, where at this time of year the salads are still bold and bright. Like the pomelo from China that led me to make my favorite Thai pomelo salad (see recipe), I came up on a pile of green papayas at our local Asian market last week that led me to som tam, green papaya salad. I love green papaya salad, particularly in Thailand, where the flavor is usually more complex somehow, and where it is ubiquitous. Like most Thai food, it is boldly flavored but perfectly balanced—sour, sweet, spicy and bitter, with a shot of umami that usually comes from dried shrimp or crab.
It still amazes me that you can make a som tam at home that transports you back to Thailand with the first bite. I get a bit of a thrill when I cook anything that’s outside my usual flavor profile, that tastes as though we must have ordered it in. This salad is one of those dishes. As is usually the case when it comes to Thai food that has that effect on me, I’m indebted to the work of chef David Thompson, whose recipes always seem at once genuine and replicable. This som tam is based on a recipe of his from Thai Street Food book, which I picked up in the airport on our way out of Bangkok on our first visit. Happy I did.
A Few Words about Pounding
Somewhat reluctantly I’ve come to really understand that pounding things in a mortar and pestle produces a noticeably different and usually better result than chopping, grinding, or grating the same things. Both the texture and the flavor are more refined and subtle. I say reluctantly because it means more work in the kitchen. But over the years I’ve come to find the use of a mortar and pestle meditative and therapeutic, especially when working a pesto or aioli into an emulsion, which is not quick, but the results of which are really worth the extra time and effort. Same with som tam.
This isn’t news to me. More than 20 years ago I attended a centenary celebration of the publication of Auguste Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire (1903). Escoffier is the great French chef who codified much of what is known as French cuisine in that seminal book. As part of the festivities, the late French Culinary Institute hosted a conference on Escoffier’s influence. Jacques Pépin, who was a dean at the school, did an eye-opening demonstration of salmon quenelles, for which he made two versions, one the traditional way, as he learned it as an apprentice in a Parisian hotel back in the 1940s, using a mortar and pestle to pound and emulsify the fish before it was sieved through a tamis, and one done in the food processor. There was no comparison. The pounded quenelles were richer and more delicate in flavor and texture, without the acrid, oxidized taste the food processor quenelles had taken on. Interestingly, Pépin’s point was that Escoffier, whose proudest contribution was improving the life of the chef by making kitchens more efficient, would have likely chosen to use the food processor over the giant mortars and pestles Pépin had trained on, hung from the ceiling on pulleys to facilitate pounding.
Although I wish I had room for them all, I do not have the culturally appropriate mortar and pestle for every cuisine in which I dabble. Generally, I use a medium-sized Italian marble mortar and a bulbous wooden pestle. While the whole papaya salad would normally fit in the Thai mortar so you could pound and bruise the papaya in the dressing, mine isn’t big enough. Instead, I pounded the dressing and then tossed it with the papaya in a big bowl, into which I smashed the pestle around a couple of times to simulate the real thing. Whatever I did, seemed to work.
Of course, if you don’t have either type of pounding implements, you can still make this delicious salad. Just be sure to chop, grate, or mash everything very finely for the dressing before tossing with the papaya. (Escoffier would approve.)
Papaya Prep
On the streets of Thailand most green papaya salad makers use large knives to cut the papaya in a cross-hatch pattern that magically makes the flesh fall into the bowl in long julienne strips. It is thrilling to watch because of the skill and inherent danger. I cheat. Every time I’ve been to Bangkok I’ve picked up a green papaya shredder, which looks like a Y-type carrot peeler with teeth that allows you shave off perfect strips of papaya, easy peasy. Without one of these or the magic technique, you can just slice the green papaya thinly with a mandoline or on a cutting board, and then julienne the slices to make the fine strips.
Pantry Pride
Whenever I’m in Bangkok I spend about half of my time in grocery stores, often ducking into one multiple times a day. When I’m not gaping over the fruit selection, I’m wandering the aisles of condiments. Even though I haven’t been in several years, my pantry is still full of ingredients from Thailand—pucks of palm sugar, vintage-dated fish sauces, vacuum packs of dried seafood and crispy fried alliums, and more. When I run out, I shop in the Thai grocery stores of Woodside, Queens, which are conveniently located in walking distance from where our car is serviced. That said, I know I am kinda nuts, so there are reasonable and delicious substitutes for just about everything in this salad, except the green papaya, itself. (Don't use regular, sweet papaya; it won't work.) Like all of my recipes, this one includes options.
Spice Girl
I am ever impressed by the Thai tolerance for heat. In college I worked for a Thai family of chefs who had restaurants in central New York, and the three brothers would try to outdo each other by eating whole chilis until one bowed out. This salad can be fiery.
On one trip to Thailand, my husband, Nate, was giving a talk at a medical school in the northern city of Khon Kaen. We arrived on a Saturday and our cab driver from the airport told us there was a night market later that evening that started at 10 pm. Of course we went. The market was buzzing with local university students. We walked the long, snaking rows of food stalls, more like tables, in amazement. We got on line at one that was making a particularly delicious looking som tam to order. The woman in front of us indicated she wanted a handful of bird’s eye chilies in her salad, more than 20 by our count. We were impressed. A little timid, Nate and I asked for just three peppers in ours. The salad maker pounded away with his pestle and scooped our salad into a plastic bag for us to eat while we walked. One bite and the salad blew our heads off. Nate couldn’t take the heat at all. I have more tolerance and finished it, but I sweated the whole way. We wanted to find the woman before us to see her eat her salad with almost 10 times the spice. Wow. Pow!
Anyway, the other day when I made this som tam at home, I used just half of a Thai bird’s eye chili and it was spicy enough for us, almost too much for Nate. I would encourage to take it easy so you can taste all the other flavors, as well. Removing the seeds and not pounding the chilis much allows you to get the flavor without the intense heat.
RECIPE: Som Tam—Thai Green Papaya Salad
2 tablespoons unsalted, dry-roasted peanuts
3 small garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
Generous pinch of salt
2 tablespoons tiny dried shrimp (integral, but if you can’t find them, just leave them out)
2 thin slices lime, cut into 8ths
6 grape tomatoes, quartered
2 long beans or 8 thin green beans, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 medium green papaya (about 2 pounds whole)
1/2 to 3 small Thai red bird’s eye chilis, seeds removed if you don't like things too spicy, thinly sliced
3 to 4 tablespoons shaved palm sugar, coconut sugar, light brown sugar, or granulated sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce, a little more if you aren’t using dried shrimp
Juice of 1 lime (3 or 4 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon tamarind water, or 1/2 teaspoon tamarind concentrate or pomegranate molasses diluted in water, or a splash of cider vinegar
Even though they are dry-roasted, place the peanuts on a tray in a 300°F. oven to toast for 8 to 10 minutes until you smell a strong peanut fragrance and they have darkened and look shiny. Cool and coarsely chop.
Using a mortar and pestle, pound the garlic with the pinch of salt to make a paste. (Alternately you can mince or grate the garlic on a Microplane grater.) Add the lime slices (they add welcome bitterness), bruise them with the pestle, and add the tomatoes and long beans (which also add some bitterness), pounding to bruise and work everything together. Stir in the chilies without much pounding (or the salad will be extra spicy). Set aside.
Prepare the papaya. Peel it completely with a vegetable peeler. Then, using the cheater tool, a mandoline, or a sharp knife, thinly slice and julienne the flesh around the core of the fruit. When all of it is in the bowl, add the contents of the mortar and toss, pounding the papaya with the pestle to bruise the fruit and work the paste into the flesh. Add the sugar, fish, sauce, lime juice, and tamarind water and toss to fully dress the salad. Taste and adjust to balance the dressing to your taste. Serve sooner rather than later.
