This dish is loosely inspired by my go-to Thai order: som tam, or papaya salad, said Ella Risbridger – except that I use mango instead, because I find it hard to get hold of good papaya. Apparently, one of the ways that fast food makes itself irresistible is by hitting most of the base flavours simultaneously: salty, umami, sweet. This dish does exactly that, except in the rather healthier form of an enormous bowl of mostly vegetables. It is peak summer food: zero cooking, 100% refreshing.
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- 1 red chilli
- 2 medium carrots
- 3 baby cucumbers (or 1⁄2 a big cucumber)
- 50g green beans
- 1 long red pepper
- 300g chopped mango
- 10g mint
- 10g Thai basil
- 10g coriander
- 1 romaine lettuce
- 150g cooked prawns or fried tofu, or chopped chicken or crispy chicken thighs
- 30g chopped roasted peanuts
- 1 lime sriracha, if liked
Method
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- In a much-too-big bowl (it will hold everything!), whisk together the fish sauce, vinegar and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Thinly slice the red chilli and add it too (easy to omit).
- Peel the carrots and use a julienne peeler to turn them into thin, pretty little strips. Toss the carrot strips into the bowl and let marinate for a minute. Halve and thinly slice the cucumbers: if you’re using half a big boy, split it in half, and use a teaspoon to drag out the seeds. Discard the seeds, and thinly slice. Toss the cucumbers in with the carrots and stir.
- Chop the green beans. If you can do this on the diagonal, so much the better (discard the stringy ends). Add to the bowl. Deseed and finely slice the pepper; add to the bowl.
- Tip: this is a good point to stop at if you’re making in advance.
- Finely chop the mango into little dice. De-stem and finely shred the herbs, then shred the lettuce (wash the leaves; stack the leaves; roll the leaves in a bundle; slice the bundle across). Mix the leaves, the mango, the prawns into the pickled vegetables.
- Roughly chop the peanuts; quarter the lime. Divide the salad into bowls; drizzle with sriracha, if liked; scatter with peanuts; set the lime quarter at a jaunty angle for individual squeezes.
- Tip: if you keep the components separately in the fridge – so pickled vegetables and vinaigrette in one container, chopped lettuce and herbs in another, prawns in their packet – it is a phenomenal make-ahead lunch for the week.
Taken from The Kitchen Book: Good Food For Every Day by Ella Risbridger.
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