There are those that would insist that som tam can only be made with green papaya, but in fact Thais have created an almost infinite number of variations on the dish, using a variety of fruits and vegetables. This one offers an interesting way to dress up a simple vegetable like fresh green beans.

String Bean Som Tam

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Blanch the green beans by boiling them for just a minute or two, and then drain them and let them cool.
• Stir together the lime juice and sugar. It’s usually better to set it aside for a few minutes or more to give the juice time to dissolve the sugar. Stir in the tamarind sauce, chilies and garlic.
• Pour the dressing over the beans and stir to mix lightly, then pour the mixture onto a serving dish.
• Sprinkle the cherry tomatoes, crushed peanuts and optional dried shrimp over the top.

Use whatever type of lettuce you prefer. I like red coral but regular iceberg works nicely as well.

Thai Tuna Salad

Ingredients

Dressing

Preparation Method

• Mix all fo the ingredients for the dressing together and set aside for a little while.
• Arrange the lettuce of a serving plate.
• Drain the tuna and spoon it onto the lettuce.
• Pour the dressing over the tuna and sprinkle the coriander on top just before serving.

Glass Noodle Yum Salad

For this recipe, the peanuts are usually pan-roasted. Heat a heavy skillet and toss the peanuts in, shaking the skillet until the peanuts are darkened in spots. You can do this well in advance of needing the nuts.

Ingredients

Dressing

Preparation Method

• Prepare the dressing first. Mix all of the ingredients together and set aside.
• Mix the noodles, cooked ground pork, mushrooms and corander together – hands work best!
• Pour the dressing over the noodle mix and stir.
• Transfer to a serving dish or bowl. Sprinkle the crushed nuts and fried garlic over the top.

This recipe is extremely easy to make. You can prepare it first and set it aside while cooking a curry or other dish that should be served hot. This dish should be served with some raw ‘cooling’ vegetables to help take the heat off. Common choices are long beans and the stalks of Chinese kale.

Pork with lime salad.

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Grill the pork until cooked through, then slice about one centimeter / ¼ inch thick. Arrange the slices on a serving plate. For the dish in the photo, I went with an easier route of using pork that was already thinly sliced from my local Thai supermarket.
• Grind the garlic and chillies together until well mashed. Mix in the sugar, fish sauce and lime juice.
• Pour the spice mixture over the pork. Serve garnished with lime slices. Some cooks serve this cold, or even iced.

A big pile of limes in the market.

So extensive is the use of fresh lime juice in cooking that the stalls usually sell them by the dozen, while the owners of food stalls may purchase a bag holding three or four dozen from the wholesale market. A dozen limes will usually cost around 25 U.S. cents. Such is the importance of limes to Thais that an M.P. felt it necessary to bring to parliament’s attention the fact that the price of limes had exceeded nine Baht (about 30 U.S. cents) during Thailand’s boom years.

In addition to using the juice as an ingredient, many noodle and fried rice dishes are served with a lime wedge as one of the condiments. A squeeze of fresh lime juice over fried rice may not sound delicious, but the taste is quite good.

Limes originated around the Malay peninsula, where they have been cultivated since pre-history.

A pile of mangosteens in the market

Mangosteens are said to have been a favorite of Queen Victoria. She may have been on to something. According to some recent accounts, the mangosteen is one of the richest sources of chemical compounds called Xanthones. These compounds are showing promise in some trials as having many beneficial effects, with some proponents suggesting that the mangosteen could be the next fountain of youth.

Although quite popular throughout Asia, mangosteens are hard to find elsewhere since the trees are slow growing and thus not as economically viable as mango or pineapple. When you do find them, you should know that the skin is quite thick and can also stain quite badly. The best way to peel and serve a mangosteen is to use a knife to cut through the skin around the middle, then lift the top off. The segments can then be easily removed with a fork.

Watermelons fresh – and dirty – from the farm.

In Thailand, watermelon can be grown all year round. It’s one of several fruits you can count on seeing on every fruit platter, along with pineapple, rose apples and guavas. Watermelon is one of the most cooling of all Thai fruits. Nothing quite takes the edge off a spicy meal like a bit of melon. Thais grow the same varieties you will find in most other parts of the world, including melons with yellow flesh as well as the common red type. You’ll find large piles of watermelons on sale in the Muang Mai wholesale market, which lies along the river front just north of the old municipal offices of Chiang Mai. A medium sized whole watermelon may cost as little as 25 U.S. cents. Most of the customers who purchase here are the owners of smaller stalls and restaurants, who will cut up the fruits to serve to their customers. At the fruit carts which ply the street, customers will usually order just a quarter of a melon, which will be sliced into bite sized chunks.

Watermelon is known to flush out accumulation of uric acid in the system, which helps prevent arthritis, gout or uremic poisoning. Also, eruptions on the surface of the skin usually indicate an acidic condition in the blood. This comes from eating too much meat, fried food, sweets and white flour products as well as drinking a lot of soda, etc. Watermelon juice flushes a lot of the acid from the system and renews the blood. When this happens the skin will start looking and feeling better.

Exactly where watermelons were first cultivated is not known for sure. However, it is known that they were grown in ancient Egypt as much as 5,000 years ago. The melons can be seen in paintings and seeds have been found in tombs. It has also been suggested that the Egyptians pickled watermelons as well, although I’m not sure why.

Red rose apples fancily displayed in the market.

Rose apples are eaten skin and all. The texture is somewhere between a watermelon and an apple, as is the taste. Rose apples can have a slightly bitter after-taste, but this is rarely unpleasant. There are several varieties of rose apples, with the most common in Thailand having a light green green skin. This variety is available almost year round, while seasonal varieties vary in color from apple red to almost black. The red variety is native to Malaysia, where its common English name is "Malay apple." In Southern Thailand, you will also see a small cherry red variety that looks a bit like a child’s top.

Mangoes and Sticky Rice

(4 Servings)

Sweet Sticky Rice

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Before cooking sticky rice, it must first be washed. Rinse the rice in a strainer until the water is clear. Traditional wisdom in Thailand is that it takes three washings to properly clean the dust off the rice.
• Here’s the tricky part: the rice must be soaked overnight (in other words, about eight hours or more) before cooking.
• Next, sticky rice must be steamed, not boiled, so you cannot use a traditional rice cooker unless it has a strainer to keep the water separated from the rice. You also get the best results if the rice is a uniform depth when cooking. I’ve gotten my best results using a round cake pan with a mesh bottom placed in a vegetable steamer. The pan allows the rice to be smoothed to an even depth, while the mesh bottom allows the steam through without letting the rice fall out. Steam the rice about 20 minutes.
• While the rice is cooking, stir together the sugar and coconut cream. It helps dissolve the sugar if you warm the coconut cream for 20 to 30 seconds in the microwave before stirring in the sugar.
• As soon as the rice is cooked, transfer it to a large bowl and pour the sweet coconut cream over it. Stir it to mix and let it set. If you seem to have too much liquid, strain the mixture to remove the excess.
• I think this dish is best when the rice is still just a little bit warm.

Coconut Cream

Ingredients

Preparation Method

• Heat the coconut cream over low heat, then stir in the rice flour and salt. Keep stirring until the mixture begins to thicken, then stir in the sugar. Remove from heat as soon as the sugar is dissolved.

Now, to put it all together, you’ll need the above items plus two ripe mangoes and (optionally) some puffed yellow mung beans (these have a taste and texture like puffed rice, which you could probably use in a pinch).

• Peel the mangoes then cut the meat lengthwise off either side of the large central pit. Further cut the mango into bit-sized pieces and arrange on a plate.
• Spoon some of the sweet sticky rice onto the plate next to the mango.
• Drizzle some of the coconut cream over the rice and the mangoes, then sprinkle some of the mung beans over the rice.

A basket of ripe yellow mangoes at the wholesale market in Chiang Mai

All mangoes have more or less the same flat tear-drop shape. The thing I’m always fascinated with about the mango is the wide flat pit that extends to just below the skin. The flesh of the mango is built up on either side of the pit rather than spread evenly around it as with most other fruits with a core, such as apples, guavas and pears. As one cheeky author of Wikipedia put (before being removed), "Some people believe that the safest way to eat a mango is in the bathtub, or sitting naked on a deserted beach, or even on top of a mango tree itself." Indeed, fresh ripe yellow mangoes are a rather messy affair to peel and slice.

The most popular yellow mangoes have a short season, with the best fruits available only from about March to May, although in recent years various tricks have been employed to extend this to the point where some form of yellow mangoes are available year around. These will be eaten fresh, with the most popular and traditional method being fresh cut mangoes served with sweet sticky rice. At the height of the yellow mango season in May, Chiang Mai holds a Mango Fair in Buak Hat park at the south-western corner of the old city. There’s lots of mango eating of course, and no festival would be complete without a Mango Queen.

"Fresh picked" green mangoes on sale.

Green mangoes are available for a longer season, from as early as October up to May. Green mangoes generally have a tart taste with a crispy texture. They can be quite similar to green apples in both taste and texture; and like green apples, if you eat too many you will be sure to get a tummy ache. Green mangoes are eaten fresh, sometimes with a sticky brown sweet and salty sauce. Green mangoes also find their way into salads and other savory recipes.

The variety of mangoes available in Thailand points to the fact that the fruit originated in South and South-East Asia. They have obviously been cultivated for quite some time. The Hindu Vedas, written about 4000 B.C., refers to mangoes as "the food of the gods" and Buddha was presented with a mango grove in which to rest. The word mango comes from a Portuguese corruption of the Tamil word for the fruit, man-kay. The curved tear-drop shape of mangoes is said to be the inspiration for the paisley pattern in Indian textiles. From Asia, the colonial powers spread mangoes throughout the world. Today, mangoes are said to be the most widely eaten fresh fruit in the world. Mangoes contain significant amounts of vitamins A, B and C.