Green Papaya Salad and Ginger Sponge with Lemongrass Custard

My husband went on a fishing trip last week and brought back some lovely fresh reef fish. I wanted to use the Venus Tuskfish and simply pan fry it in a little butter and oil. I thought this Thai Green Papaya Salad from Rick Stein's book would match it well and it did! This dish is a favourite in Thailand and known as Som Tum.

Green Papaya is simply unripe Papaya (or Pawpaw). The fruit is shredded using either a knife or a papaya shredder (I found one of these in the Asian supermarket and it made the job much quicker and saved me from chopping off a finger!). The papaya itself has little flavour but it picks up the flavours you add to it and gives them a crisp, chewy texture. This dish is made by first bruising (partially crushing the ingredients to release the flavour) some garlic, red chilli and green beans in a mortar and pestle. You then add palm sugar, roasted peanuts, dried shrimp, fish sauce, tamarind water, tomatoes and lime juice and bruise again. Finally you add the shredded green papaya and give it all a final bruise. This salad was quite sour and if I made it again I would put in a little less lime juice. In Thailand the salad is often made to suit the taste of the customer by varying the quantities of fish sauce (salty), palm sugar (sweet), lime juice (sour) and chilli (hot).

By the way dried shrimp are just that; sun dried shrimp that smell terrible! They are often used in Asian cooking and come in a variety of sizes.

Rating 7 out of 10.

I found this receipe for Ginger Sponge with Lemongrass Custard when I was looking for ways to use the left over tough part of lemongrass stalks (which I had been keeping in the freezer). This simple sponge was mixed in the mini food processor and cooked in the microwave. The recipe said 8 minutes so I popped it in and left it, without checking, to come back to 4 very burn't sponges! Having already made the lemongrass infused custard, which looked delicious, I decided to give the sponges another go and this time cooked them for 5 minutes on medium high and then a further 3 minutes on high. They were much better and had a nice light texture with a slight hint of ginger. They did get "tougher" as we ate them which I guess is because they continued to cook once out of the microwave. I would recommend watching the sponges carefully as you cook them if you want to try this recipe. It did have nice flavours but getting the cooking time right was a little difficult! http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/gingerspongewithlemo_84534

Rating 6 out of 10.