Green Papaya Salad

This is my version of a traditional Thai raw salad with a mildly spicy seasoning. I acquired the original recipe from the Blue Elephant Cooking School. The dried shrimp does tend to give this dish a strong flavour. Like my fellow garlic lovers here at Zaar, the first time I made this I used more than one clove of garlic, 3 to be exact, but in this dish to much garlic becomes overpowering and one misses out on the wonderful combination of flavours.

• Ready In: 20 mins
• Serves: 1

Ingredients

• 200  g  peeled and thinly grated unripe papayas (I prefer to slice the papaya into long paper thin slices)
• 1  clove  peeled garlic
• 4  green  green bird's eye chilies
• 30  g  French beans or 30  g  the asian yard  long beans, cut to to 2 cm pieces
• 20  g  dried shrimp
• 2  tablespoons palm sugar
• 3  tablespoons fish sauce
• 3  tablespoons lime juice (you can use lemon juice)
• 60  g cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 30  g roasted peanuts
•  lettuce leaf (to garnish)
•  coriander leaves (to garnish, you can use mint leaves instead)

Directions

1. In a mortar, roughly pound the garlic and chillies.
2. Add the beans and pound, then the shrimps and pound again until crushed.
3. Add the sugar, fish sauce and lime juice and stir together.
4. Add the tomatoes and press with the pestle to bruise the tomatoes.
5. Add the peanuts and the papaya and stir until well mixed in.
6. Serve cold in a round dish lined with lettuce leaves and sprinkle coriander leaves on to of the salad.