Som Tam [ Thai Papaya Salad ]

Today I had to bring a side dish for a cipâtes, a traditional French Canadian meat pie  made with veal, pork, chicken, beef and potato. In old days they made it with deer meat, rabbit, hare, duck or whatever meat the man brought home from hunting. Some pronounce it "cipaille" making the "T" silent. Its super good and it is one of my favorite meat pie dishes. As you see, this dish is pretty 'heavy and filling', so when I was asked to bring a side dish for it, I can only imagine something fresh, a bit sourish with a bit of hot kick. I searched for a good recipes on the internet and this Papaya salad caught my attention. The original recipe called Som Tam, and it uses green papaya. I made a lil' twist on the recipe by using a half-ripe papaya, its still very crunchy and can be easily cut into matchstick size/julliene, has a beautiful pale orange-ish color and it taste slightly sweet. 

Ingredients:

Salad:
250 gr half ripe papaya, julliened
2 small size carrot, julliened
½ cup of julliened cucumber
½ cup of beansprout, washed
5 cherry tomatoes, cut in four
1 cup of fried peanuts (unfortunately, I didn't have it at the time)

Sauce:
1 garlic
½ tbsp ebi (dried shrimp)
½ tbsp gochujang sauce (you can use 5 thai chilli, adjust to your taste of spiciness)
½ tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp lime juice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp shaved indonesian palm sugar (or any palm sugar will do)

1. Crush ebi into powder with a mortar pestle. Add garlic and continue crushing until the garlic become paste. If you are using thai chilli, add the chilli in and crush it at the same time.
2. In a small bowl, add gochujang sauce (if you use it), fish sauce, lime juice, salt, sugar and palm sugar. stir until the sugar melts. Add in the ebi and garlic mix, stir well.
3. In a big bowl with lid, mix the papaya, carrot, cucumber, beansprout and tomatoes. Pour the sauce mix onto the salad and toss gently. Sprinkle the fried peanuts on top.
4. Serve as side dish or appetizer. Or even a snack? its very refreshing on summer time like this :)



Happy Cooking!!

PS: You can make the salad 2 hours ahead, cover the bowl and keep it in the fridge until serving. If you do this, keep the fried peanuts and only sprinkle it on serving plate, otherwise the peanut will get soggy.