Som Tam: Grilled Tiger Prawns & Citrus Som Tam Salad

Som tam is one of those dishes that reveals the cook every time. Nothing is cooked, nothing is masked. The quality and seasonality of what goes in comes straight through on the plate, and if you gave a hundred cooks the same ingredients you would get a hundred different salads. That is not a weakness of the dish. It is the whole point.

Green papaya is available year-round at most Asian supermarkets across the UK. You want it firm and unripe, pale green flesh, no give when you press it. Once shredded it has a neutral, crunchy quality that absorbs the dressing without overwhelming anything else. If you cannot find green papaya, green unripe mango is the closest substitute and makes for a sharper, more aggressive version of the salad.

Most traditional som tams use dried shrimp pounded into the base for their savoury depth. This version uses whole grilled tiger prawns as the main protein, which is a deliberate departure. A small amount of dried shrimp still goes into the base for its flavour, but the whole prawn brings something different: fresh, sweet, with a little char from the grill. It is a version of what we try to do at Farang: take the best of Thailand and bring it together with the best of what we have here, holding loyalty to flavour whilst respecting the tradition it comes from.

The clementine juice is something I have not seen in another som tam recipe. A small amount replaces some of the palm sugar in the dressing, bringing natural sweetness without the weight. It makes sense both logically and on the palate. If clementines are out of season, fresh mandarin juice works well. Do not use bottled citrus juice here. Fresh only.

The order you build this salad matters more than most people realise. Start by pounding the garlic, dried shrimp, salt and chillies hard. These need real force to release what they are holding. Add the green beans and pound again. Then add all the liquid seasonings and stir to form the dressing, dissolving the palm sugar completely before anything else goes in. The peanuts go in next, lightly cracked rather than pounded to dust. Then add the tomatoes, papaya, grilled prawns and chopped lime, and work everything together gently. Pound the starch out of the papaya and the dressing turns bitter. Keep some texture in it and the salad stays alive.

Serve with sticky rice. Not jasmine. You want something to mop up the dressing that pools at the bottom of the bowl. Eat it immediately. This is not a dish that holds.

Grilled Tiger Prawns and Citrus Som Tam Salad

Serves: 2 | Prep: 20 mins | Cook: 10 mins | Difficulty: Medium

Ingredients

For the prawns

• 8–10 tiger prawns, cleaned, deveined, shells removed

• 1 tsp fish sauce

• 1 tsp vegetable oil

For the salad

• 4 garlic cloves, peeled

• 2 tsp dried shrimp

• A pinch of Maldon sea salt

• 3 red bird's eye chillies (more if you want more heat)

• 10g green beans, cut into roughly 2cm pieces

• 10–15g palm sugar

• 20ml thick tamarind water

• Juice of 2 limes

• Juice of 1 clementine

• 2 tbsp fish sauce

• 1 tbsp peanuts, fried or roasted

• 230g cherry tomatoes

• 200g green papaya, shredded (available at most Asian supermarkets)

• ½ lime, chopped with the skin on

Method

1. Coat the prawns in the fish sauce and oil and set aside for ten minutes. Grill on a high heat for 2 minutes each side until just pink, with the edges starting to catch and char. Set aside.

2. In a large pestle and mortar, pound the garlic, dried shrimp and Maldon salt together until broken down. Add the chillies and pound hard until bruised and bleeding colour into the paste. Add the green beans and pound again. These first ingredients can take real force. Getting this base right holds the whole salad together.

3. Add the palm sugar, tamarind water, lime juice, clementine juice and fish sauce to the mortar. Stir with the pestle rather than pound, working the palm sugar until it dissolves completely into the dressing. Taste it now. It should already be making sense: salty, sour, a little sweet, with heat building underneath.

4. Lightly pound the peanuts separately so they crack but do not collapse, and add them to the mortar. Then add the cherry tomatoes, shredded green papaya, chopped lime and grilled prawns. Work everything together with gentle pressure from the pestle. The papaya needs a little bite left in it. Pound the starch out of it and the dressing turns bitter and starchy. Keep some texture and it stays alive.

5. Taste and adjust. The balance you are looking for is salty, sour, spicy and sweet all at once, with a few mouthfuls of bitter from the lime skin as you eat through the bowl. Correct with fish sauce for salt, more lime for sour, a pinch more palm sugar if it needs it. Plate and eat immediately.

Chef's notes

The balance of this salad is where most people go wrong. It should hit salty, sour, spicy and sweet all at the same time, with mouthfuls of bitter from the chopped lime with the skin on as you eat through the bowl. If it tastes flat or one-dimensional, something is missing or out of proportion. Taste before you serve and adjust. Do not skip that step.

If you cannot find dried shrimp, leave them out rather than substituting. The salad will be a little less complex in the base but will still work. Dried shrimp are available at most Asian supermarkets alongside the green papaya.

The dressing in this recipe, the tamarind, fish sauce, lime and clementine, works well on grilled fish, scallops or cold vermicelli noodles with herbs. Make a little extra and use it across the week.

More recipes at faranglondon.co.uk. Sauces and pastes for cooking Thai at home at payst.co.uk.

This recipe was also published by The Independent

This recipe was also published in The Handbook

This recipe was also published in Verge Magazine

This recipe was also published by Hinton Magazine