Lao · salad

Tam Mak Hoong (Pounded Green Papaya with Padaek and Field Crab)

Tam Mak Hoong (Pounded Green Papaya with Padaek and Field Crab) reads funk & ferment 6.8, umami 6.7 and salinity 6.5 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a Lao salad, about 30 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

The measured notes (of 18)

Funk & Ferment 6.8 · Umami 6.7 · Salinity 6.5 · Marine & Briny 5.3 · Citrus 5.3 · Sourness 5.2 · Heat 3.9 · Allium 3.5 · Sweetness 3.1 · Fruity 1.7 · Richness 1.2 · Herbaceous 1.0 · Warm Spice 0.8 · Bitterness 0.7 · Earthy 0.5

What's in it (12)

Time & effort: about 30 min · effort: medium

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 23.6 kcal, 0.9 g protein, 0.2 g fat, 5.3 g carbs

Dietary: Contains meat · Contains seafood — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (6 steps)

  1. Put the garlic and chillies in a tall clay or wooden mortar and pound about 15 times, just until they break down into a rough wet rubble. A Lao tam is a bruising job, never a grinding one, and the pestle is swung rather than pressed.
  2. Add the long beans and pound 10 more strokes to split and bruise them so they can drink the dressing, then the aubergine wedges for 5 strokes.
  3. Add the field crab and pound 5 strokes to crack the shells and release the brine inside. Salted field crab is sold in jars at Lao and Isan grocers and tastes intensely of river mud and salt in the best sense; without it the salad loses its backbone. Do not substitute cooked crabmeat, which contributes nothing.
  4. Spoon in the padaek, fish sauce, palm sugar and lime juice and stir with the pestle to dissolve the sugar, about 30 seconds. Taste the dressing on its own now: sour first, then salty and fermented, then hot, with the sugar barely detectable. If it tastes sweet, it has become a Bangkok salad.
  5. Add the papaya threads and the tomatoes and work them in with the pestle in one hand and a spoon in the other, turning from the bottom and giving light strokes rather than crushing blows, for about 1 minute. You want the papaya bruised enough to soften and take on the dressing but still crunchy.
  6. Taste once more, adjust with lime, and serve immediately in the mortar or tipped onto a plate with steamed sticky rice and raw cabbage. Tam mak hoong weeps quickly and is not a salad that keeps for even 20 minutes.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.