Green Papaya Salad - Som Tum

Ingredients:

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 lime
2 cups green papaya, shredded
6 green beans
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon dried shrimp
2 chili peppers
5 cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons peanuts, toasted


Preparation:

Green papaya salad is made using a clay mortar, wooden pestle and a spatula. 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, unless you like your salad really hot. Add the green papaya, dried shrimp, toasted peanuts, fish sauce, lime juice and palm sugar. Use the pestle to push the mixture up in the mortar and the spatula to push it down so that the mixture is mixed well.

However, if you do not have a big enough mortar you can crush garlic, tomatoes, green beans. Set them aside in a large bowl. Add dried shrimp, fish sauce, lime juice and palm sugar to the bowl. Add green papaya and mix well. Serve with sticky rice and a sliver of cabbage, green beans and Thai basil.

For som tum pbooh, omit the dried shrimp and toasted peanuts and add salted crabs instead. I microwave the salted crabs for 30 seconds before adding them to the papaya salad to kill any residual bacteria. Add only half of the fish sauce called for because the salted crab can be quite salty.