Som Tam (Thai Green Papaya Salad)

Peel the Green papaya, halve it and scoop out the seeds. Shred it into long, fine strands — a mandoline, a julienne peeler, or a heavy knife cutting the flesh into thin sheets then into matchsticks. You want strands about 2 cm wide that still snap. If it is hot where you stand, keep them in iced water until you pound, then drain hard and pat dry.

⚠ Tip: A coarse shred is a bad som tam: it drinks dressing slowly and stays bland. Fine strands, no water clinging.

Peel the Garlic. Juice the Limes into a small bowl and pick out the seeds. Halve the Cherry tomatoes. Cut the Snake beans into finger-length pieces and crack each one open once with the back of a knife so it takes the dressing — but do not reduce it to mush.

In a clay mortar (or a heavy stone one, never a blender), pound the Bird's eye chillies, Garlic and Palm sugar with the pestle in firm downward jabs until the chillies split and the sugar dissolves into a thick, fragrant paste. The smell should sting your eyes a little. Pound, do not stir: you want the chilli skin broken, not puréed.

⚠ Tip: Resist the urge to over-pound. Bruised, not pulverised — chilli and garlic purée tastes bitter and flat.

Add the Shrimp paste, Thai fish sauce, Limes juice and Tamarind paste. Pound and turn together until the seasoning is even and the mortar holds a dark, glossy liquid. Taste it now: it should be aggressively sour, salty and sweet, sharper than you would dress any other salad, because the papaya will dilute it.

⚠ Tip: Salt, sour, sweet in that order: fish sauce first, lime next, palm sugar rounds it off. Balance before the papaya goes in, never after.

Add the Dried shrimp, the Cherry tomatoes and the Snake beans. Pound just a few times — enough to crush the tomatoes into the dressing so their juice runs out and to bruise the beans — then stop. The tomatoes should be soft and split, not liquified.

Tip half the shredded Green papaya into the mortar. With the pestle, use it like a spoon: lift and turn, press and fold. Pound once or twice as you go, only to bruise the strands so they take the dressing, then add the rest of the papaya and keep turning for around 1 min, until every strand is slick and darker and a little liquid sits at the bottom of the mortar. Do not keep pounding until the papaya is limp.

⚠ Tip: If it looks dry after a minute, add another splash of lime juice, not water. Water dilutes the fish sauce and flattens everything.

Taste once more — sharp, salty, sweet, hot — and adjust with a squeeze of lime or a splash of Thai fish sauce if any note is hiding. Pile onto a plate with the dressing from the mortar spooned over, scatter the crushed Roasted peanuts and the toasted crushed Dried Thai chillies on top, and eat right away with sticky rice or grilled chicken.

⚠ Tip: Som tam does not wait. Within an hour the papaya weeps and the crunch is gone; if you must hold it, keep the shredded papaya in iced water and dress at the table.