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The Thai dish of som tam, or green papaya salad, is wonderfully refreshing. In restaurants, it's served as the cook makes it. But Thailand’s street stalls and specialist som tam shops will tailor the dish to each customer's taste, with additions such as shredded carrot, dried shrimp and small salted crabs (so tiny most of the shells are edible), and they'll also ask how spicy you want it. Take the same attitude when you make it yourself and add seasonings to suit your taste.

In Thailand, som tam is usually accompanied with steamed sticky rice as a neutral backdrop to the strongly flavoured salad. It's also good with boiled rice noodles, and it can be made into a heartier meal by adding boiled salted egg or cooked prawns, or by serving it as a side dish to Thai grilled chicken with nam jim jaew dipping sauce.

Som tam should be made with a mortar and pestle. With this old-fashioned but useful implement, lightly crush (not to a pulp) some of the ingredients, such as the garlic and chillies, and gently bruise the others.

Green papaya is the fruit that's been picked before it's ripe, so it has a tart flavour and crunchy texture. Thai grocery stores sell green papaya either whole - in which case you need to peel and shred it - or pre-shredded. The latter is convenient, but use it within a few days and store it in the fridge, or it becomes mushy.

The following quantities are enough for one person; simply double the ingredients if you are serving two. Unless your mortar is very large, though, you shouldn't increase the amounts by too much.

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