Much before Dr K Suresh Kumar, founder-director of the Institute of Palliative Medicine, Kozhikode, had a reality check with Thailand’s famous papaya salad, he had heard a lot about it. Small wonder this, for the salad has always been one of the toppers on CNN’s annual list of the world’s 50 best dishes.
A travel freak, Suresh Kumar is quite into the freak food habits of different cultures and ethnic groups he has met and spent entire days with during the course of his extensive jaunts abroad. It is one of those trips that he came across the appetizing salad, made with one of our favourite backyard fruits.
It is the fruit in its raw form that perks up the salad, not its ripe version. Therefore, Dr Kumar was in for a surprise when he had a taste of it from one of Bangkok’s wayside eateries. This was no sweet treat, yet it had a sweet touch to it. It was sweet, sour hot, spicy and tangy with the right measure of salt.
After that first meet with papaya salad, the doctor had several encounters with it in many variations and combinations. Curious to know all about the salad in its original avatar, the doctor finally got his answer from a group of nurses working for Srinagarind Hospital in northeast Thailand. The true taste of papaya salad unfolded when a medical team of which Dr Kumar was also a part had a meal in a village along the Thailand-Laos border. Not only was the salad eaten, but the team also got a demo of how it was made. How about a try?
Here’s what you’ll need: Seven to eight very spicy green chillies, a slice of lime, two spoons of tamarind soaked in water, 4-5 tomatoes chopped, 2 strings of long beans chopped, a spoon of palm jaggery (karipetty), 1 small crab (salted and dried), 2 spoons of fermented fish (small varieties of fish are mixed with salt and sealed in airtight bottles for three months, followed by a mix of rice flour with it and again into airtight bottles for another three months).
All the above ingredients are pounded. This is then mixed with thinly or finely chopped raw papaya and gently pounded once again. The salad is finally garnished with a handful of peanuts and served with rice and grilled chicken.
All is fine about the salad except for your nose which takes a hit. Pretty pungent or smelly, it is not one for a diehard vegan who would be wiser for the day to be nowhere near it.
The pickled crab and fermented fish are two culinary gems which crossed over to Thailand from Laos. They are the pure and original papaya salad mainstays.
All said and done, the crab made the doctor go back to his medical college days. Somewhere down the line he had heard that eating uncooked crab could give you the time of your life. He had learned that a food-borne parasite termed Paragonimus would wreak havoc on human beings, crippling them. These parasitic worms are usually embedded in uncooked crabs and other crustaceans which get transferred into the human body when they are eaten raw. Luckily for him, the tryst with the salted crab left him untouched. However, close to two crores are infected by Paragonimiasis every year. Though not deadly, the ailment needs prolonged treatment.
The crab can be substituted with dry shrimps or prawns and the doctor says that combination is equally delicious and nutritious as well. But not for culinary purists who claim that all new experiments wrought with the salad are killing its pristine taste, its originality and traditional flavour. They cannot be faulted, for the market is ready with pure vegan papaya salad. Chefs are ready to dish out the salad with raw cashew nuts instead of raw crab and a bit of soya sauce in place of fermented fish.
The salad is a phenomenal serve. All those who have had a mouthful would vouch for its unusual taste. Weird and wacky as it may sound, a once-in-a lifetime bowl of papaya salad in its original form should surely be one great experience. If not the original, then at least a fake, with veggies and nuts!
