Three words, my friends: green papaya salad.

For the green papaya salad at Esarn Kheaw on Uxbridge Road in London is one of the most earth-shatteringly beautiful things on God’s Great Big World of Earth. Really, it’s astonishing. Go there; try it. It’s a revelatory experience. It’ll make you swear out loud. Through a mouthful partially-cogitated unripe papaya you will noisily burble the words ‘fuck’ and ‘me’. People might not know that’s what you’re saying. You might not know that’s what you’re saying, but I will, because I predicted it here on this blog merely seconds ago. As you may remember.

I must warn you of something, though. You WILL become addicted to the green papaya salad at Esarn Kheaw. You WILL go back again and again and probably even again. And you WILL sometimes end up offended or frustrated by the service. You might even be overcharged.

But there is hope for you as there has been hope for me. For I have the secret to eternal happiness. Yes, I do.

I tried making green papaya the other day after watching this vid and it worked a ruddy treat. A right royal ruddy treat. Honestly, it was bang on. And as easy as expelling urine from one’s genitals. Unless one is elderly. In which case it was very very slightly more difficult.

But does this mean I never have to darken the door of Esarn Kheaw again? Well… no. You see, there’s another problem. It’s called tom kha gai. It’s a rich, coconutty chicken soup with chillies, lime juice and galangal. Now, this one I’ve made at home before, and to very good effect. But whereas my papaya salad comes exceptionally close to the Esarn Kheaw original, alas, my tom kha gai, good as it is, doesn’t. Theirs, I’m afraid to say, is fucking amazing.

And then there’s their sausages. They don’t look much when they arrive. In fact they look like the dinner of an idiot; like a few barely cooked chipolatas with a small packet of KP thrown over them and a raw chilli resting on top. But like so many things in Thai cooking, the secret is in the balance of flavours. Hot salty sausage, crunchy peanuts, blisteringly-hot raw chilli and a few slices of sweet pickled ginger. This is not the dinner of an idiot – this is the creation of a genius.

There are other goodies: khanom jeep – Chinese style dumplings of pork and prawns with deep fried garlic and thick, sweet soy sauce provide a welcome respite from the chilli onslaught, and their tom yum soups are as tom yum soups should be – face-scrunchingly sour, salty and hot.

In fact all of the soups I’ve eaten there have been brilliant, as have all of the salads. The stir fries probably won’t change your life and although the curries are OK, they’re nothing compared to what you can make at home if you’ve got the patience to make your own pastes.

So, for now, despite everything that’s happened between us, Esarn Kheaw still has her spicy nails in me. And unless I can learn to equal her sausages and tom kha gai, it looks like it’s going to stay that way.

Thai green papaya salad

Serves 1

If you’re not too familiar with far eastern salads, I’d recommend eating this in your local Thai restaurant a few times before making it at home. It’s quite an unusual dish by western standards and you need to get a good feel for the balance of sweet, sour, salty and hot.

Thai people use a really big pestle and mortar to make green papaya salad, but if you don’t have one, you could probably get away with a large, sturdy bowl and a rolling pin. If you do it this way, make sure you chop the peanuts quite finely before you start. You can get green (unripe) papaya from Thai grocers.

It’s best to make one serving at a time. A medium-sized green papaya is enough for two servings.

Ingredients (per serving)

A large handful of shredded green papaya
A small handful of dried shrimps, chopped
1 small Thai red chilli, chopped
About 4 green beans, chopped into 2cm lengths
Half a clove of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 large handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
2 small handfuls of roasted peanuts (it’s fine if they’re salted)
1 tablespoon of palm sugar
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
1 tablespoon of lime juice

Method

First you’ll need to peel the papaya, then shred it. The easiest way to do this with a julienne tool. It looks like a peeler but it cuts things into very thin strips. If you’d rather do it with a knife there’s an explanation of the technique at the beginning of this vid. Once shredded, set the papaya aside.

Add to the mortar the green beans, red chilli and garlic and pound for about 10 seconds. Throw in the peanuts and dried shrimp and pound for another 10 seconds. Add the palm sugar and tomatoes and pound again, lightly.

Now introduce the lime juice, fish sauce and a large handful of shredded papaya. Give one last quick bruise and mix.

Lastly, taste the dressing – it should be salty, sour, hot, and a little bit sweet. If the balance isn’t quite right, adjust with your seasonings.

Green papaya salad is wonderful on its own, with some sticky rice, or with a few raw vegetables on the side (cucumber, green beans and wedges of white cabbage are particularly good). What am I saying? It’s not ‘wonderful’ – it’s fucking astonishing! Make it immediately or I’ll kill you in the face!

You could serve it with some roast potatoes and a bit of gravy. And I’d admire you for it. Or you could do what I did. Which is this.

Thai-style pork hock salad with crackling and prawns

For the salad

1 pork hock.
12 tiger prawns, cooked.
A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved.
2 sticks of lemongrass, finely sliced.
3 lime leaves, finely sliced. (Cut away the stalks first.)
2/3 of a long cucumber, seeds chucked and flesh sliced.
Half a banana shallot, finely sliced.
A handful of radishes sliced lengthwise.
A small carrot, cut into thin strips.
A big handful of mint leaves, picked.
A big handful of coriander leaves, picked.

For the dressing

Half a large clove of garlic.
2 thin, long red Thai chillies, de-seeded if you want to be safe.
3 to 4 teaspoons of palm sugar.
2 juicy limes. More if they disappoint.
Some fish sauce.

To finish

2 teaspoons of ground, roasted rice (Optional but nice. And easy enough to make.)

Method

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius (gas mark six) and put a large saucepan of water on the hob to boil. Take the hock, score the skin in regular intervals and plunge it into the boiling water. Make sure all the fat is submerged. Simmer it for two minutes and take out.

Season it all over with salt and pepper, put it on a baking tray and shove it in the oven to roast. After two hours, pump the heat up to 220 (gas mark seven) for half an hour, or until the crackling looks crunchy.

Now make the dressing. Take a pestle and mortar and add a small pinch of salt along with the garlic and chillies. Pound them into a rough paste. Now add the juice of two limes, around the same volume again of fish sauce and three teaspoons of the palm sugar. Dissolve the sugar into the dressing by crushing and mixing with the pestle. Taste it. It should taste equally hot, salty, and sour with a bit of sweetness rounding it off. Some limes are juicier than others, and batches of fish sauce vary in saltiness, so feel free to adjust the proportions.

Next: prepare the rest of the raw salad ingredients and add them to a large bowl.

By now, your glorious pork hock should have cooled a bit. Remove the crackling and break into bite-sized bits. Pull the meat off the bone and slice it up quite thinly. You don’t have to put all the meat in the salad. I put a third of it aside, shredded it, and made a version of this.

Add the prawns, pork and crackling to the bowl, along with the dressing and the ground roasted rice, if you’re using it. Mix it well with your hands and eat it straight away with a fork.

By the way, I should credit Mark Hix, here. This recipe was inspired by a brilliant Vietnamese-style creation of his, what I made once.

Fried halloumi salad with chilli and crispy garlic

Get yourself:

4 baby aubergines (the ones that are about as long as your finger).
1 large courgette.
Half a red onion.
3/4 tin of mixed beans (mine were chickpeas and fava beans).
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
Half a large red chilli, de-seeded and equally finely chopped.
5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.
A handful of coriander leaf and stalk, chopped coarsely.

Warm the oil on a low heat and add the chopped garlic and chilli. Keep stirring until the garlic is golden-brown and looks crunchy. Then take off the heat and sieve, retaining both the flavoured oil and the crispy bits.

Slice the courgette in long diagonal lengths, about 5mm thick, and do the same to the aubergines. Peel your onion and slice in into rounds, again, about 5mm thick. Douse your veg in the flavoured oil, keeping aside one tablespoon for later on. Now season the veg with a good pinch of salt and put under a hot grill, or if you have a griddle pan: use that. As they are cooking, add your beans to a pan and begin to warm them through. Once your vegetables are soft and look nicely roasted, remove them from the grill and add them to a large bowl with your warmed beans. Add the juice of half a lemon and mix.

Now it’s time to fry your halloumi. Add the remaining spicy oil to a medium-hot non-stick pan and fry the cheese until brown on both sides.

To finish, add the chopped coriander to the salad and check the dressing with your finger – it may need another squeeze of lemon. Then lay on the fried cheese and garnish with a sprinkle of the crispy garlic and chilli mix. Hearty veg, zesty dressing, salty cheese: rude-bwoy-inna-Kingstan!