I really love it when a dish reminds me
of a holiday that I've taken and
recently I went to Vietnam and it's real
battle ax of a woman called Madame toet
who did a show with Anthony Bourdain
back in the day show me how to make this
Vietnamese papaya salad now it's really
really simple I've got this green papaya
here which is essentially an unripened
por por and what we're going to do with
it is just peel off the
skin and then we're going to shred it uh
along with some carrot so what you need
to do is literally take your peeler like
that and get the green skin
off like
so and then once we've
got that white flesh underneath
exposed you can do one of two things you
can either use a neat little Gadget
which is um a shredder that you might
get from say an Asian supermarket but if
you don't have something to actually
shred it then you can just get your
knife and literally go like
that and just chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop
chop and then just going to get my
peeler which I had before and then
literally
just shred it like that and it comes off
in
beautiful fine
shreds just going to have have a
fantastic texture for that salad now the
next thing I'm going to
do once I've got enough of my papaya is
I'm going to add a little bit of carrot
into it as
well and same principle with the carrot
what I'm going to do is I'm just
literally going to make some incisions
along the
carrot like
so and and once I've made the incisions
I can do the same thing I can literally
just take my
peeler and I'm just going to run the
peeler down the edge like that again
shredding it really really
finely as with any salad basically what
you need to do next is really just start
layering it all up so the next thing I'm
going to put into this is some herbs now
I'm going to use some mint leaves um you
want to really use as many fragrant
herbs as you can actually I've got three
different types here I've got some mint
I've got some coriander and I've got
some basil so just get a little handful
of
each and whilst if you're in Vietnam
you'd probably want to be using
Vietnamese um basil or Thai Basil I'm in
London and I don't have that so I'm just
going to use regular basil and the point
is it's really just about having a
really nice fragrant flavor uh to your
salad so don't worry too much if you
can't find exactly the
ingredients that they would have in the
Far East now now there's my herbs just
put them in come check it out really
nice
colors and then the next thing is some
fried shalots a little handful of them
and if you want to know how I made the
fried shalots just check out one of my
other videos I did a little howto for
you makes it really easy they're super
simple but there's no point buying them
from the supermarket if you can do it
yourself I've got some garlic chips as
well really simple just sliced up some
garlic check that out
just sliced up some garlic and then I
just fried them off as
well next is some cashew nuts I got some
toasted cashews and I'm just going to
pound them up in a
bowl and the thing is you can see what
I'm doing here is while I'm layering up
with flavor I'm also layering up with
texture as well so you've got the crunch
of the shots you've got the crunch of
these cashew nuts as well it just really
makes it more interesting to eat now
sprinkle them into the bowl as
well and what's next then just a little
bit of dressing now to do this it's a
really really simple Vietnamese dressing
quite typical uh it's three parts fish
sauce to three parts uh White uh rice
vinegar so stick that into the bowl a
little bit
more and then to sweeten it a little bit
I'm just going to add a pinch of sugar
give that a
mix and then I'm just going to add a
little bit of lime juice as well so get
half the
lime and then we just want to squeeze
that into the bowl as
well give it a stir and then just
drizzle some of that mixture over the
top and then I'm just going to get my
hands in and you literally have a look
at this I just want to tease it with
your fingers you don't want to be
squashing it you just want to literally
just coat it in that dressing and it
looks great and it smells amazing it
really is a fragrant fragrant dish now
all I need to do is get myself a
bowl here we go and then just lift it
with the tips of your
fingers into the middle of your
bowl like
that and
then I'm going to garnish it with the
obligatory chili and you can use as
little or as much as you like now if you
want a really really hot hot chili kick
you can use those um Bird's chilies but
this is a pretty mild
one just sprinkle them on the top and
then you know what just to make the
presentation nicer add a little bit more
texture as well just going to add a few
more of the ingredients that I put on
earlier so we got some more of our
shalots a little bit more of our cashew
nuts few of those garlic
chips and that's it it literally is as
simple as that your Thai Papaya salad
it's
done