Som Tam

P Ui taught me how to make som tam! It's a green papaya salad that I've been dying to see how its made, pretty much ever since I arrived. I think it’s my favorite Thai dish, which is hard to pin down because it’s all soooo good. 

So I have added cooking instructions on how to make som tam, though it's not really cooking seeing as how you just mash up all the ingredients. The only way I know how to make it is with a mortar and pestle, I don't know many people with these in their kitchen back home. But I suppose you could substitute a large mixing bowl and a wooden spatula. You definitely do not  want to use a food processor. The point is to extract the juices, let them mix together and coat the salad, not shred into a pulp. 

To make som tam you will need the following: 

1 Green papaya--Aka not ripe 

1 Large cucumber 

2 Tomatoes 

2 Peppers (the spicier the better) 

Garlic (the more the merrier) 

Fish sauce (I have been assured one can get this in the supermarket in the Asian aisle. I don't know how it would taste without it.. but I do know that the sum tam is not fishy in any sense. The fish sauce is more for a salty taste)

1 Teaspoon salt- or to taste 

2 Teaspoons sugar-or to taste  

1 Lime

Shred the papaya and cucumbers with a knife. Chunk up the tomatoes and peppers. Place all ingredients in a mortar (mixing bowl) and pound with pestle (wooden spatula). You just want to kind of juice the veggies and mix everything up, not pound to a pulp.

Squeeze the lime over product and voila, you now have som tam. 

You can eat with rice or by itself. If it is too spicy, I would suggest eating with rice if you were in Thailand, it helps offset the intense 'melt the teeth out of your mouth' spicy of Thai som tam. 

If you really want to get authentic, get some sticky rice to eat with it. Sticky rice is this weird rice they eat in Isan (the eastern part of the country). Big city people consider sticky rice to be at the very very bottom of the rice food chain and wont touch it. P Ui, being from Bangkok, is like this.