Isaan-style Fruit Salad

Description

Serves 2 quite generously. Delicious with freshly steamed jasmine rice — or sticky rice — to soak up the dressing.

Ingredients

• 1 green mango, peeled and julienned
• 1 apple, sliced
• 1 crisp Asian pear, sliced
• a good handful of grapes, seeded if necessary
• 8 cherry tomatoes, halved if large
• big handful of long beans in 2-in segments
• big handful of roasted peanuts; dried shrimp
• big handful of Thai "globe" eggplants, quartered and soaked 1 hour in salt water, then rinsed (optional)
• 2 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 6 tiny Thai chiles
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbsp palm or coconut sugar (substitute dark or light brown sugar — but moderate lime juice in this case)
• 3 limes, sliced vertically around the "core" into seedless quarters (alternately, juice them)

Directions

1. In a mortar and pestle pound the garlic and chilies and then add sugar, fish sauce, and limes (if using juice, add a bit now and a bit as you go along, to avoid splashing the dressing into your face!).
2. Pound again.
3. Add long beans and pound only to bruise, not to mash; follow with mangoes and tomatoes.
4. At this point use one hand to mix with a large spoon while pounding with the other.
5. Add fruits, pound and mix.
6. Taste for salt-sweet-sour-hot, and adjust seasonings as necessary.
7. Place on a plate and sprinkle with peanuts and shrimp (alternately, pound a few of the shrimp and leave the rest for garnish).