On stormy days, my mother would tell me to go to the back garden and pick some papayas. Ripe ones could be eaten as fruit. The smaller sized ones could be cooked into soup with meat and bones.
As for the green fruit with latex, my mother would shred it into long strips to make salad, served with grilled sesame rice paper. After a while of working in the garden, it was enough to make a decent meal for the family without having to carry a basket to the market.
Papaya for salad must be green. If it is slightly brown but not soft, it is still usable because it still retains the necessary crunchiness.
Mom shredded the papaya with a special double-edged knife, so each strand was even and of moderate thickness. This not only made the salad absorb the spices easily, but also made the food look beautiful when presented.
The papaya fibers need to be washed with coarse salt to reduce the sap, then soaked in ice water to keep them crispy. After being drained, the papaya will be mixed with crushed roasted peanuts, fried onions, fish sauce, chili, garlic, lemon, and Vietnamese coriander.
More luxurious families will add salty ingredients, such as boiled shrimp, pork skin, shredded chicken, or beef jerky. Some families will use a pestle to pound the dish, similar to the salad (Sontam) in Thailand, so that the papaya strands are soaked in spices.
Mom has a habit of wearing gloves and then squeezing the salad to let it absorb the seasoning. Mom said that the salad noodles squeezed by hand will gradually absorb the seasoning, and will have more flavor than mixing with chopsticks. After mixing the salad, Mom usually covers it for about 30 minutes to let the salad absorb the seasoning before serving it on a plate.
Papaya salad does not have a complicated recipe, but the focus is on the flavor. It blends ingredients and spices that complement and complement each other.
Green papaya has a cold (yin) nature, mixed with hot (yang) ingredients such as garlic and chili, it neutralizes the hot and cold properties in the body. The saltiness of the fish sauce is also reduced somewhat thanks to the acid in lemon.
The salad noodles are cold in nature, eaten with grilled rice paper or hot rice, which are both hot in nature, is a clever combination. On sunny days, the sour papaya salad helps cool down and make you sweat. On rainy days, the spicy papaya salad with red chili helps warm the body and expel cold air.
The papaya salad my mother made on the days she “hid” from the market, carried the flavor of my childhood. During the off-season, it was a snack on my father’s drinking tables. During storms or crop failures, it was the main dish on the family dinner table. It didn’t look complicated, but each person made it with their own flavor.
Sometimes the same person, but at different times, also creates different flavors. My mother is always a chef with a lot of determination in cooking. When she is happy, the papaya salad will also have a sweet taste. For example, when she is coughing with my father, the salad will definitely be spicy with the smell of chili pepper. That is to say, each dish carries a little bit of the feelings of the cook.
In October in the Central region, the rainy and stormy season is coming. I looked out into the back garden and saw that the papaya trees were ready to be picked. Mom's papaya salad must be on the hot dinner table soon...
Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/goi-du-du-ngay-mua-3143356.html
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