Running a little busy with some writing assignments, and when you have to work you just can’t, I was supposed to announce the winner in a post yesterday but just didn’t get around to, I did put the name up on my FB status, so incase you didn’t notice the lucky winner for the Braun Multiquick Cordless is Abigail Caidoy from Dubai (I believe she has already received the package! that’s super quick!). These days we are on a salads only dinner diet. Basically trying to get in as much food in the raw as possible. I am also trying out going lactose free, I have kept the milk out of my daily chai, tried soy milk last week, this week having chai with rice milk. Ate no chocolates (only 1 on the first day) and biscuits (though I usually munch on Glucose biscuits with evening chai), but I can’t do without yoghurt. I did last week, but yesterday just had to have some. So its okay I guess, not having milk isn’t that difficult. I guess I might not go completely lactose free, but will aim to be 80% free of it.

Here’s one of my favourite ways to eat a green Papaya. Called Som Tam, its a Thai salad. My two most favourite Thai dishes happen to be pad thai and this som tam. I am kind of okay with the green curry and red curry, not that hot. Also always worried if there’s going to be fish or oyster sauce in the food. Many moons ago I had ventured to have soup at the Thai place in Ibn Batuta food court, that was the only vegetarian thing they had on the menu. I almost gagged because the soup tasted like rotten fish excavated from an underground sewage. So here’s Som Tam version completely suitable for vegetarians. Sorry if I have offended anyone with this description, flesh in any of its forms, for me, is cringe inducing.

Ingredients for Som Tam

1 small green papaya, peeled and shredded
1 large tomato, deseeded, cut into stripes
fistful of mung sprouts, for extra crunch
couple of spring onions, chopped
chopped green chillies (optional)
1 large handful of roasted, shelled peanuts
for the dressing:
juice of one lemon
2,3 garlic, pressed
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon honey, just to round off the sweetness
1 tablespoon soy sauce
salt to taste

Method

1. Assemble all the salad ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Add all the ingredients for the dressing over the salad, toss. Check for taste, it should have the right balance of spice, salt, sweet and sour.
3. Pile into bowls, garnish with more peanuts if you like.

Green Papaya, can anything be more effortless than a green papaya. When I go veggie shopping buying a green papaya is like that big kill, that can last for days, and can be turned into all sorts of dishes. It is so effortless that only a moron will think of dunking it in pesticides. For the life of me I have never seen anything pestlike on any papaya trees we have grown in our various backyards. So in that faith I always pick an unripe papaya when I go veggies shopping.  Its so versatile, its like a vegetable waiting to do your bidding, “come make me into a salad, grate me please” or “chop me up into that raita, now, I beg you”  or “boil me till I turn soft and I can be in any dish you want” - at least those are the sounds I hear!

Back home papaya and drumsticks are common to many households, growing in profusion, sometimes ignored, sometimes when there’s nothing else, these are always at an arm’s length to be plucked and prepared into a main course or side dish. Some fruits are allowed to ripen and the sweet orange flesh consumed by the hungry mouthfuls, by humans and the feathered friends alike. And always there’s more from where it came, waiting and waiting and waiting.

Ingredients

2 cups green papaya, pared & cubed

1 cup any tuber, chopped (you can use sweet potatoes, yam, colocasia)

3/4 cup yellow pigeon peas/toor dal/arhar dal

1 small lemon sized ball of tamarind, soaking in 1/2 cup warm water

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

salt to taste

Seasoning

1 teaspoon whole mustard

1/2 teaspoon fenugreek/methi/menthiyam

1 whole dried red chilly, torn

2, 3 shallots/pearl onions, chopped

1 sprig curry leaves

1 tablespoon cooking oil/edible coconut oil

Method

1. Soak the dal for an hour and pressure cook for 5 minutes after the first steam. Don’t be in a hurry to remove, let it naturally cool down before you open the lid, meanwhile just put together the other things.

2. Boil the papaya and tuber until tender, sometimes I find the green papayas take too long to cook, so I pressure cook the papaya and the tuber for just one steam whistle in the cooker no more.

3. Once you have the two main ingredients cooked, that is, the vegetables and the dal, the rest is a cinch – in a large pot combine the dal and the vegetables and bring to a boil, adding turmeric, and salt.

4. Reduce to simmer, and gradually add the tamarind water, now cover and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in between and adjust the salt.

5. Finally heat oil in a small pan and prepare the tempering/seasoning, follow this basic order: torn chillies, mustard, fenugreek, curry leaves and finally the chopped shallots. Fry till the onions get caramelised and the whole house smells like ‘god’s own country‘.

6. Pour the seasoning over the dal, give it a final stir and take it off the fire.

Pulincurry is a very run off the mill sort of home food, and can be rustled up with whatever vegetables are lying in the fridge, I suspect a houswife trying to finish off vegetables in her pantry, but sick of making sambhar might have come up with this. Even so, it tastes good with a sweet vegetable and a tuber. So pumpkin or squash, or ash gourd and yam, plaintain and colocasia all of these can be made into a pulincurry. All the sort of vegetables that are more or less perennial around the tropical coast. It’s usually had with rice, a dried vegetable side, and papadam, if its a good day.