Sawaddee ka welcome to hot thai kitchen recently I've been making a lot of heavier comfort food
fall winter dishes so I thought it's about time we lighten things up a little bit with a salad
so I'm going to use a vegetable that's in season right now which is this child a squash to make us
a Thai salad that in Thailand we call tum fakmeaw tum is to pound so this is a pounded salad
like papaya salad and fakmeaw is our term for this vegetable here which grows in the northern
part of Thailand where it's colder so it's sort of our version of winter salad let's get started so
if you've never cooked with a chayote before it is extremely versatile think of it sort of like
a jicama or an apple that's not sweet so it's got a firm crunchy texture and we can use it in
stir fries it's great in soups you can put it in curries I mean or you can eat it raw like like a
vegetable and dip it's really good subtle subtle sweetness and Thailand we also use the leaves as
well for stir frying and whatnot that's the seed it's very soft you can just sort of spoon it out
this white bit is okay and to get it into sticks like this you just make big slices first and then
take each slice and cut them on a bias and then you end up with nice sticks that'll look great
in a salad now in addition to a chayote I'm also going to add some apples to it which I have cut
sort of in the same way now in Thailand we also use apples a lot in this kind of salad and the
sweetness will pair really well with the lime acidic dressing other than that everything is
pretty straightforward so let's start pounding so I'm using my special papaya salad mortar here so
the mortars bigger ants made of clay the pencils made of wood is a lot lighter so it's for made
specifically for making this kind of salad it's also great for just light duty crushing if you
don't have one big like this don't worry you can start it out in a smaller mortar and I'll show you
what to do after okay so I'm going to go in with some garlic and chilli so standard two ingredients
for a thumb which is this kind of salad just until there's no big chunks especially the chilies skin
is fine but no big chunks of chilies I'm going to go in with my palm sugar for this I want to
make sure I finely chop it otherwise it'll have a hard time dissolving in here if you want you
can quickly dissolve it and make a quick syrup but this is fine as well at this point you just want
it to be sort of muddy pasty moist it's not going to be completely dissolved that's okay I'm going
to now go in with some dried shrimp now dried room you can find at Asian grocery stores usually
in the refrigerated section and if it's large I roughly chop it they're like shrimp jerky as a
nice chewy umami flavor so good so just a quick pound just to break up the shrimp a little bit
and now I'm going to add something that's a little different and that is cashews the butteriness of
cashews work really well with the chayote and the apples so already roasted but unsalted and
now I'm going to crush it until the broken into small pieces and it'll help thicken the dressing
a little bit make it a little bit more luscious small pieces we're not doing cashew butter here
just to break it up so it mixes better I'm going to use a spoon to sort of flip the mixture so it's
mixed up a little bit I'm going to add lime juice promise me you'll use fresh lime juice if you can
fine line for whatever reason even lemon juice would be better than bottled stuff and then fish
sauce squirrel it around just to get it mixed up I'm going to add in some tomatoes but I'll
show you a little trick that I do I find that if I cut it into regular wedges they're a little too
big so I just do an offset west like this then you get smaller pieces and then you get nice sort of
interesting looking pieces now I'm just going to dump these in not pounding just squashing a
little bit just to get the juices release just a couple times and the juice will come out and
sort of mellow out the acidity of the lime juice and become part of the dressing okay at this point
I'm done with the pestle and I'm going to move it into a mixing bowl so you guys can see better
and also to show you that if you're working with small pestle a small mortar and pestle transfer it
into a large mixing bowl and you can finish your salad there okay so that's a a workaround if you
don't have this large mortar so now I'm going in with my chayote and also my apples so the apples
I put a little bit of lime juice on it so they don't turn brown now the ratio between chayote
and apple up to you if you want more apple let's check out they I like to do a little bit more
chayote I find the apple a little bit too sweet what I like to add and this happens all the time
in Thailand is people like to add little shreds of carrots for sort of pops of color so I've got
this carrot which you can can tell has been used for this purpose many times and I've got this cool
julienne peeler that's a Thai brand we use this a lot for papaya salad and things and you just great
some shreds right into the bowl and doesn't have to be a lot and if you don't have this cool peeler
you can just hand julienne it there that's it and now your salad is like a party I'm also going to
add some green onions which is not common but I think it works really well with this one so some
chopped up green onions if you've got long beans you can also put some long beans there we go now
that look that's looking good I'm gonna give this a taste mmm spot-on now I'm going to show you a
little plating trick if you want to make this nice and beautiful for your guests so I've got
some apple slices here that I finly thinly slice and I've just been soaking them in lime water just
to prevent them from turning brown and I'm going to just drain them off real quick and then I get
a plate and I like a dark-colored played because it's the salad stands out more you fan this out
as sort of like a bed for your salad and it's pretty and it's just a little something special
you know there you go so pretty this looks so good it just looks so refreshing and you know this is
a great side dish if you've got something heavy and you want like a slaw type thing to go with
it if you were eating pulled pork or barbeque oh this would be the perfect accompaniment just
some whole cashews on top so people know there is cashews in here and that is it how beautiful
is that now that is guaranteed to impress your next guest and all you've done is slice up some
apples and put them on her plate okay let's taste it sure I get a cashew mmm crunchy super
refreshing the butteriness of the cashew it just helps mellow everything out I love chayote it's
such a versatile vegetables if you've never cooked with it I really encourage you to give it a try oh
and it's spicy and it's garlicky it's the perfect side dish to really any meal in my opinion but
especially if you're having something rich and heavy oh so good so when you make it send me a
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please through the button is right here and I will see you next time for your next delicious
Thai meal and I just soaked them in some lime juice water just to prevent them from burning
they will never burn in the lime water