Plantcrush

Summer is almost upon us! Time for all the refreshing foods, like this green papaya salad!

My apologies for the huge hiatus on the blog, y’all, my design thesis has been my main priority for about a year now! I am happy to report that I have successfully defended my thesis to graduate. This past weekend, I finally graduated with my Master’s in Landscape Architecture! It still feels so surreal to type those words. I’ve been an emotional, nostalgic mess, and am preparing for an international trip to 3 countries, but that didn’t keep me from getting back in the kitchen!

I’ve had a few potlucks in the past couple weeks, so I’ve been making this green papaya salad a lot. Everyone has been loving it! It’s a classic Thai/Vietnamese dish, and yesterday I made it again for mom for Mother’s Day. Besides spring rolls, Vietnamese salads are one of my mom’s favorite things to eat!

To make this salad, I basically marinated the papaya shreds with my homemade vegan fish dipping sauce, with a few adjustments to the sauce to make it more suitable as a marinade rather than a dipping sauce. We typically eat it on top of bánh phồng tôm chay (AKA vegan shrimp puff chips), bruschetta style, but it can also be enjoyed on its own! The recipe is below, I hope you love it!

Green Papaya Salad | Gỏi Đu Đủ makes 8-10 servings

Prep time: 15 minutes (add 15 minutes if you’re shredding the papaya yourself!) Wait time: 1 hour - to overnight

Ingredients:

• 1 pound and 10 ounces of shredded green papaya (from the veggie section at the Asian market-I like to get the pre-shredded kind to save time)
• 1 medium carrot, julienned (for color; this is optional)

Marinade:

• 3 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 2 small Thai chili peppers, minced (or to your taste!)*
• 1/2 cup lime juice
• 1.5 cups coconut water
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 3 teaspoons Himalayan sea salt (can adjust according to your taste)

Toss in right before serving:

• 3/4 cup Thai basil, cut into a chiffonade
• 1/3 cup crushed peanuts
• 1 Thai chili pepper, minced

Serving suggestion:

• serve on top of vegan shrimp chips (can be found at Asian markets! Make sure it’s the non-shrimp one!)

Method:

1. Combine all the marinade sauce ingredients in a big bowl. Taste and adjust to your liking. Sometimes I don’t feel like mincing the garlic or chili peppers myself, so I blend the sauce in the blender.
2. In a large bowl, pour the sauce over the shredded papaya and carrots, and gently toss until well coated.
3. Cover the bowl or transfer the mixture to a covered container, and let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour (best is overnight). The longer it sits in the marinade, the better developed the flavors will be.
4. Right before serving, top the salad with the basil chiffonade, crushed peanuts, and extra chili peppers if you like. Mix everything together to get it all incorporated. After this step, I also like to garnish the top with even more basil, peanuts and chili peppers.
5. Serve this salad by itself or with vegan shrimp chips! Here’s a video on how to make those.
6. This salad keeps well for about a week in the fridge. The leftover marinade can be used as a dipping sauce for spring rolls, or as a sauce to go over noodles or other salads.

Add-ins and modifications: I’ve made this with shredded vegan chicken before or thinly sliced mushrooms, and it was great! Feel free to experiment and keep things interesting! If you’re adding some things in, I would say add it in the marinade stage so the flavors can soak through the add-ins as well.

Let me know if y’all have any questions about this recipe; it’s a pretty easy one for parties and such! Hope you guys enjoy this recipe for all your graduation and summer potlucks! I’m off to prepare for a trip to Taiwan, Vietnam, and Tanzania…more on that later! ?