Som Tam (Green Papaya Salad)

Variations

• Som tam Thai: The popular version with peanuts and dried shrimp (this recipe).
• Som tam pu (pla ra): Lao style with fermented crab or fish sauce, bolder.
• No papaya: Substitute shredded carrot, cucumber, or cabbage.
• Milder: Leave out the chilies, use bell pepper.

Tips

• The mortar is there to build the dressing, not to break the papaya. Pai huang gua draws the line: there "the main ingredient itself is what gets broken", while here "the garlic, chillies, beans and tomatoes are pounded to build the dressing, while the papaya is shredded and only turned through it. Same action, different target." That is the whole of "pound gently" below — the papaya is in the mortar to be coated, and every extra stroke is damage to the one texture the dish exists for.
• A dressing with no oil in it works by dissolving, which decides what has to be balanced. Yam wun sen notes that this, laap and itself "all dress with no oil at all." So there is no emulsion to hold together and nothing being carried in fat — the opposite problem from caesar salad, where an unemulsified dressing slides off the leaves and pools in the bottom of the bowl. Everything here is water-soluble and arrives at full strength at once, which is why the recipe is a ratio tasted to rather than a method: lime, fish sauce and palm sugar are the three axes, and there is no fat to round any of them off (balancing flavour).
• "Dress just before serving" is osmosis, and the guide names the failure. Salt and seasoning lists both outcomes: salt a vegetable in advance and it "releases water and goes limp — in a quick-pickled salad, that is the goal", while the same move on a salad is "a puddle on the plate. That is not." A fish-sauce dressing is a salt solution, so green papaya left sitting in it is a quick pickle nobody ordered — the shreds soften and the dressing thins with the water they gave up. Twenty minutes costs you both.
• And the Lao version differs along those same three axes. Laap records the border relation: "the Thai version often takes a little sugar while the Lao one does not", and says som tam has the same one. Som tam pu with fermented crab or pla ra runs the salt and the ferment up and the sugar down. Three axes, moved — not a different dish.
• Shred the papaya fine to keep it crunchy.
• No mortar? Toss in a bowl with two spoons, pressing as you go.
• Balance the lime, fish sauce, and sugar — taste and adjust.
• Pound gently so the papaya doesn't turn mushy.
• Dress it just before serving to keep the crunch.