Description
You may know green papaya salad, and this salad is its sweeter cousin that uses easy to find ingredients. Serve it alongside any meal as a salad, Thai or otherwise!
Ingredients
- 1 ear sweet corn (you will need about 165 g kernels, which may not be the whole ear)
- A pinch of salt
- 1 salted duck egg (optional but recommended)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1-3 Thai chilies, to taste
- 1.5 Tbsp palm sugar, finely chopped
- 1 heaping tablespoon dried shrimp, roughly chopped if large
- ⅓ cup long beans, cut into 2-inch pieces
- 1 small tomato, cut into wedges on a bias (see video for technique)
- 1.5 Tbsp fish sauce (see note 1)
- 3 Tbsp lime juice (see note 2)
- 1 cup julienned cucumber
Instructions
Note:This recipe uses a large mortar and pestle made specifically for pounded salads. If you do not have it, you can still make this salad in a mixing bowl. See blog post above for instructions. If you only have a small mortar & pestle, you can do everything up until adding the long beans, then transfer to a mixing bowl for the rest.
Bring a large pot of water to a full boil. Add corn and boil for 6-7 minutes. Remove from water, sprinkle the corn with salt on all sides and let cool completely. Once cooled, lay the corn on its side and slice the kernels off the cob, trying your best to keep the kernels together in big pieces; set aside. You will need roughly 165 g of corn kernels, so depending on the size of the ear, you may not need all of it.
Cut the salted duck egg in half right through the shell and scoop out the egg in one piece with a spoon. Cut one half of the egg into chunks (for tossing into the salad), then cut the other half as nicely as you can into wedges (for putting on top of the salad).
In a large salad mortar and pestle, pound garlic and chilies until there are no more chunks.
Add palm sugar and pound until mostly dissolved.
Add dried shrimp and long beans, and pound briefly just to crush the long beans.
Add tomatoes, fish sauce and lime juice, adding also a few pieces of the lime rind after juicing. Pound gently to mix and crush the tomato slightly, using a large spoon to help fold the mixture.
Add cucumber, corn and the chunks of the salted duck egg, toss to mix with a spoon. Plate and arrange the wedges of salted duck eggs on top.
Notes
- If you like a funk and are feeling adventurous, you can also do a combination of fish sauce and plara (aka padaek in Lao) which is an unfiltered fish sauce you can find at many souteast asian grocery stores.
- For a richer dressing, you can also do a combination of lime juice and tamarind paste. You can buy ready-to-use Thai tamarind paste (aka tamarind concentrate) in liquid form, or make your own from tamarind pulp with this tutorial. Make sure you buy THAI tamarind, not Indian as they are different.