Mostly the restaurants carry either Green Papaya Salad or Green Mango Salad. The Papaya salad is known as Som Tum in Thai, and the mango salad is known as Yum Mamuang. But I thought why not combine both together and present a vegan/vegetarian version without any fish sauce and shrimps. Also, I did not use any soy sauce for my dressing so its a non-soy version too. :-)
Kis Approved? Yes!
I went with a simple dressing that I prepared with garlic, dried Thai Red chili, tamarind paste and of course jaggery and salt. The flavors were not so strong and also it wasn’t spicy but delicious for sure. I didn’t expect vaandu to relish this (as I expected this would be spicy for him), but to my surprise he did. I only prepared two servings of this salad, just for me and M and he was so upset that I didn’t make for him too. So I can happily add that this salad is a kid-approved one too. :-)
I used my Asian Julienne Peeler to cut them into those small strips. These Julienne peelers are very handy, and it’s a great addition to your kitchen gadget collection. PS: I know I am posting back to back vegan recipes, and this is my sixth one. I didn’t plan, but it just happened this way. My next recipe is yogurt-based, so stay tuned for the same. And find my other recipes here. For recipes ideas – follow me on Instagram. So without any further ado, here is the salad recipe.
Vegan Green Papaya and Green Mango Salad | Thai Special
Ingredients:
Green Papaya Juliennes – 1 cup Green Mango Juliennes – ½ cup Carrot Juliennes – 1 tbsp Crushed Peanuts – 2 tbsp Toasted Black Sesame Seeds – 1 tsp to garnish For the Dressing: Garlic clove – 1 Tamarind Paste – ½ tsp Salt – ½ tsp Thai dried red chili – 1 Jaggery – 1 tbsp heaped Water – 2 tbsps
Prep – Work:
Wash the peel the skin of green papaya, green mango, and carrot. Using a julienne peeler, shred them into thin julienne and set aside the required part. I used half of a raw mango and raw papaya and ¼ of a carrot. Chop/crush the peanuts roughly. I had roasted peanuts in hand. So crushed them roughly. Raw peanuts can be used too.
Preparing the dressing:
Blend the garlic, salt, Thai chili, jaggery with 2 tbsp of water and in a coffee grinder or blender. Grind them coarsely like below and set aside.
Assembling:
You can just layer the veggies and just before serving you can add the dressing and toss them together.
Notes:
Carrots are entirely optional. I just added a tbsp for the color. I used up the entire dressing for this salad. You can adjust the dressing ingredients and the amount of dressing as per your preference. Soy sauce can be included and in that case, go with less amount of salt. Both black and white sesame seeds can be used for garnishing. Make sure you add the dressing just before serving. If not the salad would become soggy.
📖 Recipe
