Spicy Green Papaya Salad, Breakaway Style

Green papaya remains mysterious to many of us. Why would anyone eat unripe fruit? Won’t it be astringent, bitter, and cause stomach aches or worse?

With some fruits all of that might be true, but for papaya, no. Is there a difference between green papaya and regular papaya? No — green is just unripe; it turns yellow, and sweet, after a while. But seriously, why eat unripe papaya? Because it has a fantastic, slithery, snappy texture, and tends to absorb whatever flavors you toss at it. It seems especially at home with citrus and chiles, which is what I’ll describe below.

But before describing how it was made, a word about prepping the papaya. Choose a firm, young-looking one; it shouldn’t look tired and old (which, alas, seems to be a common way of presenting them, at least at many of the Chinese markets around that routinely stock them). First, peel it with a vegetable peeler. Then slice it lengthwise and, using a spoon, scrape away the seeds. Slice each half again lengthwise, and proceed to shred the fruit via your favorite method. I find that a cheese grater works well, but I’m just as likely to begin slicing like mad with a sharp knife. You want thin strips, as in the photo above.

If it’s a young, lithe papaya, the seeds will be white-ish. If it’s middle aged or older, the seeds will be black, and the flesh will be slightly more yellow than its younger brethren. We can still happily eat an older one, it just won’t have the snappy texture of its youth. The always-informative Andrea Nguyen has an excellent little primer on green papaya here. She says that the slimy slippery dewy enzymes (papain) that the fruit gives off when prepping it make for a great exfoliant/facial, so you can give that a shot as you practice your knife skills in prepping the rest of the salad.

There is one extra somewhat fussy step you must do before proceeding to build the salad though.  Place the shredded papaya in a colander, and liberally sprinkle with kosher salt (Andrea and Vietnamese culinary tradition call for sugar here as well,  but I omit it). Let it sit for a few minutes, as you would salted eggplant, to draw out as much moisture as possible. Though it sounds counterintuitive, rinse the papaya with running water to rinse the salt away, transfer it to a clean tea towel, bunch up the corners, and squeeze the hell out of it. You want to wring as much moisture out as you can, so that the fruit will absorb, sponge-like, whatever flavors we’d like to inject into it.

Transfer the papaya to a bowl, and fluff it up a bit with your fingers to liberate it from the dense squeezy shape of the towel. Then add the following and gently mix with your hands:

• several limes, zest plus juice
• drizzle of oil (I like using walnut oil)
• drizzle of agave nectar, or your preferred sweetener
• handful of sliced radishes (I’ve used watermelon radish here, but any radish will do)
• jalapeno, de-seeded and de-veined, then sliced thinly
• habanero, manzano, or other fruity insanely spicy chile, de-seeded and de-veined and sliced thinly
• small piece of sweet bell pepper, any color, julienned
• at least a cup of mixed herbs — try Thai basil, mint, and parsley
• pickled ginger, chopped
• chopped nuts on top for extra crunch — I like pecans here
• edible flowers, just to make it pretty (pansies are used above)

This salad should be SPICY. In that sense it’s probably more like a som tom (Thai spicy green papaya salad) than a Vietnamese one. Supergreat in hot weather.