Perfectly balanced, but this spicy salad is not for the faint-hearted

The dish: Tam Som, Laos

Whether it’s tam som or som tam… don’t hold the spice.Credit: Getty Images

Plate up How’s your spice tolerance? Are you good with chilli? Do you order your vindaloo extra spicy? Do you watch Hot Wings and fancy your own stellar performance? Then it’s time to try tam som, otherwise known as green papaya salad.

And not just in Australian restaurants – in Laos or Thailand. Order it “medium spicy”. And prepare to have your world turned upside down. Tam som is one of those dishes that is well known to Australians in a certain form, and yet in its home it takes on all new, beautiful and fiery dimensions. It’s the perfect balance of five tastes: sourness, saltiness, sweetness, spiciness and umami.

This dish begins with green, unripe papaya, which is julienned and pounded with a mortar and pestle along with palm sugar, lime juice, shrimp paste, fish sauce and a selection of other ingredients, depending on your location: fermented freshwater crabs, thai eggplants, cherry tomatoes, green beans, small prawns, garlic and MSG. Oh, and bird’s eye chillies. Lots of them. This pounded salad is often served with sticky rice, and it is straight-up fire.

First serve Though this dish is often associated with Thai cuisine, especially the Isan in the north-east, it’s likely tam som originated across the border in Laos (where it is more specifically known as tam mak hoong, to differentiate from other pounded fruit salads). There, locals made use of ingredients that were imported by the Spanish and Portuguese during the 17th century – papayas and chillies – to create an iconic dish, which was adopted in the Isan region in the early 19th century. The Thais flipped the naming convention, calling it som tam, and upped the spice levels to suit local palates.

Order there Sample the Laos version of this dish at Manda de Laos in Luang Prabang (mandadelaos.com). For the fiery Thai version, try Som Tam Jay So in Bangkok (no website).

Order here In Sydney, head to Fairfield and pay Lao Village a visit (no website). In Melbourne, try Tai’s Lao Thai Restaurant in McKinnon (taislaothairestaurant.com.au). In Brisbane, opt for Boo’s Kitchen (booskitchen.com.au).

Make it Create your own version at home following Adam Liaw’s carrot and coriander som tam  recipe on Good Food.

One more thing The name of this dish is the description: “tam” means to pound, while “som” means something sour. So, smash something like green papaya, or green mango or even green banana, and you will have a version of tam som.