This is not the papaya you’re thinking of – the ripe golden breakfast fruit that people drizzle with lime juice and eat while vacationing in tropical climes. This papaya is unripe: green on the outside and white on the inside. It’s shredded and mixed with green beans, fresh tomatoes, lime juice, and spices. The beef is then marinated in lime, garlic, and fish sauce, and grilled. Add a rice base, and you’ve got an unusual and delicious salad.
I love the combination of hot spices and cool papaya in this dish! The recipe comes from Nelly Salvacion, my consigliere in all things Asian. First she showed me the traditional way to shred the papaya with a huge knife (or what some might call a machete), but then we came to our senses and used the grating attachment on the food processor. Less dramatic, but we still have all of our fingers.
If you haven’t eaten much Thai food, you’re missing out on a wonderfully aromatic and flavorful cuisine. Cold beef and papaya salad may seem exotic, but give it a couple of years, and it will become as familiar to the American palate as ramen or dim sum. I think we’re egalitarian eaters in this country; to paraphrase a line from Field of Dreams, if you cook it, we will come.
Thai Papaya Beef Salad
Serves: 4
Prep time: One hour and a half
For the beef:
Ingredients
- 1 flank steak (or two New York strip steaks), sliced thinly
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
- 4 tablespoons lime juice
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce (available in the Asian food section of most grocery stores)
- 1 tablespoon palm sugar, or dark brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon ground pepper
- 1 tablespoon canola oil
For the salad:
Ingredients
- 4 cups unripe papaya (available at Asian grocery stores, or Whole Foods)
- 4 ounces green beans or Chinese long beans, cut into 2-inch lengths
- 1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
- 1 red chili pepper – more if you like it hot
- ½ cup roasted peanuts plus 2 tablespoons peanuts for garnish
For the salad dressing:
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons lime juice
- 3 tablespoons fish sauce
- 2 tablespoons palm sugar or dark brown sugar
For serving:
Ingredients
- 3 cups steamed white rice
Directions
- Mix together minced garlic, cilantro, lime juice, fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, pepper, and oil for the marinade.
- Marinate beef in mixture for at least one hour.
- Make the salad dressing by mixing lime juice, fish sauce and sugar together. Set aside.
- Peel papaya and cut into shreds by holding it in your hand and chopping lengthwise in a shredding motion. (Papaya will come out in strands.)
- Stop slicing when you get to the seeds; shred all four sides. Or, feed papaya meat into the grater attachment of your food processor, or use a hand grater to shred the papaya until you have four cups of it. Set aside.
- Cook the rice according to the directions on the rice container and set aside.
- Using a pestle, grind garlic cloves in a large mixing bowl, adding the chili, tomatoes, and beans, and giving them a good bash until they’re bruised.
- If you don’t have a pestle, work the mixture vigorously with both hands, kneading it to bring out the flavors. Add 2 tablespoons of the salad dressing, and add papaya to the mixture, a handful at a time.
- Continue to pound, or knead, mixture until papaya is softened, then mix until it is well combined.
- Add rest of dressing, and ½ cup of roasted peanuts. Transfer to a serving bowl.
- Garnish with rest of roasted peanuts.
- Cook the marinated beef slices on a hot grill for two minutes on each side.
- Serve beef on the side of the papaya salad, with the steamed white rice.
