I love som tam, the traditional spicy sour Thai salad made with green papaya ... and I often make my version using courgette in place of green papaya.
But this one, made with green mango ...
I'm sorry as I always like to give a substitute and try to avoid specialist ingredients as much as possible, but for this one it's green mango or bust.
I don't make this very often, but when I do I take some care over it - there's something very special to me about a green mango salad.
WhenI lived in Thailand, we had a huge mango tree, with it's branches spread above the decking by the pool.
We had a non-stop supply of sour green mangoes which were dipped into a sauce so fiery, sour, salty .... with fermented fish heads, crabs legs, all sorts of things.
And it was so good!
When the mangoes were ripe, there were fruit flies, we wanted to get rid of the fruit ... and every person who visited left with a carrier bag full of ripe mangoes - imagine, that many mangoes we had to give them away by the bag-load.
But now, it's a little more special for me to make green mango salad and there's also something I find very elegant about it too.
It's the sweet, sour flavours I think, and that it just works best with prawns or other seafood, so as I said ... I just take that little bit more care than I sometimes do when cooking.
I don't find it a chore, but actively enjoy each little step, from toasting the almonds (that I prefer in place of traditional peanuts as peanuts aren't nuts but actually legumes, and have more calories than nuts and don't have the good fats either), to blanching the green beans.
I want every single element here to be perfect.
And I also create the salad vegetables together with the dressing - it saves time, washing up, and also - so I believe - blends everything so perfectly that the whole dish comes together as one, all those elements combined into one perfect salad.
Green mango salad for two (perhaps served with rice) or for one greedy one (probably without the added rice) ....
LET'S GO!
1 tablespoon (3 teaspoons) demerara sugar
4 tablespoons water
flaked almonds
green beans, ends removed
a few small tomatoes, quartered
2 or 3 spring onions, sliced
1 medium green mango
some raw prawns, defrosted if frozen, and a whole squid tube, defrosted if frozen
1 garlic clove
1-2 birds eye red chillies
1 tablespoon fish sauce
the juice of one juicy lime
Put the sugar and water into a little pan, bring to the boil slowly and when boiling stir to dissolve the sugar and then remove from heat and cool.
Put a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat, add a handful of flaked almonds and toast for a few seconds, shaking all the time - it'll take maybe 30 seconds - then remove from heat.
Get the vegetables ready: slice the ends from the green beans and cut into inch-long pieces; quarter the cherry tomatoes; slice the spring onions.
Peel the mango and then chop into long thin slices - the easiest way is with a julienne peeler - and put to one side.
Put a saucepan of water on and when boiling add the prawns for a minute or so until almost done, then add the green beans for a minute to blanch, then remove from heat, and cover with cold water to prevent them from cooking further.
If adding squid, cut the tubes, score on both sides, and cook on a hot griddle pan for a minute or so each side. I love how the tubes roll up!
Using a pestle and mortar, pound the garlic and chilli into a rough paste but not a pulp.
Then what I like to do is make the salad veg and dressing all as one - so add the green beans, tomatoes and spring onion and pound again.
Tip in the sugar syrup, the fish sauce and the lime juice and stir and pound again, to meld it all together.
And then it's just all about putting it together! Add the salad veg/dressing to the green mango and toss with (clean) hands.
Pour it all into your serving bowl or plate and place the prawns and squid on top, and then lastly the toasted almonds.
Elegant, delicious, delicate at the same time somehow as having those huge hot and sour flavours ... this is a special one.
