What a humid, muggy, and cloudy day in Queens. Summer arrives next week and the city isn’t quite prepared.
But with summer, I am always dreaming of cold papaya salad and chicken wings the way my mother used to make them. I remember many of our barbecue events would include chicken wings and these salad to cool down the bleeeding summer heat.
Having lived in Astoria for almost a year, I still haven’t replenished many of my ingredients. That includes the stinky mudfish sauce. But since green papaya are rare to come by, I substituted papaya for cabbage and stuck to fish sauce and lime juice to make the salad.
Ingredients for Salad
- 2 cups of cabbage, julienned
- 5-6 grape tomatoes, sliced
- 5-6 green beans, cut to 1 inches
- 1 chive, thinly sliced
- 1 radish, thinly sliced
- 2-3 sprigs cilantro, chopped
Ingredients for Sauce
- 1 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
- 1 lime, zested and juiced
- 1 tbsp palm sugar
- 2 tsp fish sauce
- 1 Thai chili pepper, sliced (I used Jamaican pepper…please use very little of it. It’s so spicy!)
1. Mix the sauce together. If you use packed palm sugar, you’ll need hot water to melt it or use mortar and pestle to crush it apart.
2. Add all the salad pieces together.
3. Massage salad and sauce together. Store in fridge for about 10-15 minutes.
4. Serve cold.
I served the salad with simple baked chicken wing. You can also just have it with white jasmine rice if it gets too spicy.
