Tam mak hoong

Ingredients

• Green papaya — shredded600 g
• Padaek or fish sauce4 tbsp
• Limes3
• Garlic4 clove
• Bird's eye chillies6
• Cherry tomatoes150 g
• Yard-long beans100 g
• Palm sugar1 tbsp
• Thai aubergines — optional100 g
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Peel the papaya and shred it into long fine strips with a knife or a som tam grater.

   15 min

2. 2

   Pound the garlic and chillies in the mortar into a coarse paste.

   4 min

3. 3

   Add the cut beans and bruise them lightly with the pestle.

   3 min

4. 4

   Add the tomatoes and crush them until their juice runs.

   3 min

5. 5

   Add the padaek, lime juice and palm sugar and mix with the pestle and a spoon.

   3 min

6. 6

   Add the papaya and work the pestle, turning with the spoon, for two minutes, until the fibres soften.

   4 min

7. 7

   Taste and adjust for sourness, salt and heat. Serve with sticky rice.

   3 min

About the dish

A bowl will not do instead of a mortar: the pestle bruises the papaya fibres so they take up the dressing. Tossed with a spoon, the salad stays dry inside.

What separates it from Thai som tam is padaek, a thick fermented fish sauce with pieces of fish in it. It is sharper than ordinary fish sauce and gives the Lao version a depth the Thai lacks.

There is less sugar in the Lao version and more chilli. That difference is deliberate, and in Laos Thai som tam is considered sweet.

Worth knowing

• — The pestle strikes rather than grinds. Papaya pounded to mush loses the crunch the salad is made for.
• — Padaek is salty on its own. Salt goes in last and only if it is genuinely needed.
• — Make it a mortar at a time. In a large batch the bottom layer turns to purée before the top is dressed.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

160 kcal

Protein

5 g

Fat

2 g

Carbs

32 g

More from Laos

• Larb — Chopped meat with toasted rice powder, herbs and lime. The national dish of Laos.