Thai-Style Papaya Salad

Click HERE to order our new cookbook, The Chubby Vegetarian: 100 Inspired Vegetable Recipes for the Modern Table (Susan Schadt Press, November 2016). The recipe below is featured in the book!

The first time we had the real-deal green papaya salad was at the wonderful Memphis restaurant Chao Praya when it was in the Hickory Hill area of Memphis, and now we're curious to try out the owners' new spot. After a little internet sleuthing and a confirmation phone call, we now believe that we'll be able to order from the old Chao Praya menu at a place called China Dragon out on Hacks Cross. We'll keep you posted! 

This particular papaya salad came about since we always see papayas at the store and wonder what we could do with them. Ripe papayas seem to have more flavor and a better texture for this recipe. We realize it's not traditional, but that's kind of why we like it.








Thai-Style Papaya Salad

1 medium firm, just-ripe papaya (2 1/2 cups shredded)
1 hot pepper (Thai Bird Chili or Serrano Pepper)
1 1-inch knob ginger
1 cup cilantro
1 clove garlic
1 green onion (sliced)
Juice of 2 limes
1 tablespoon Braggs Liquid Aminos
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup roasted peanuts (chopped)
2 sprigs mint
Sriracha (to taste)
10-12 leaves of romaine lettuce

Peel the papaya and shred the flesh using a serrated peeler or by slicing the flesh into thin matchsticks with a knife. You want to get all the papaya flesh while avoiding the large center cavity that's full of seeds. Set shredded papaya aside and prepare the dressing. 

In a food processor or using a mortar and pestle, blend the hot pepper, ginger, cilantro, and garlic. In a large bowl, whisk together the pepper, ginger, cilantro, and garlic mixture with the green onion, lime juice, Braggs, sugar, and chopped peanuts. Add the shredded papaya and toss to coat. 

Serve family-style garnished with mint sprigs and Sriracha with the Romaine leaves on the side. To eat, grab a Romaine leaf and fill it with the spicy papaya salad. Top that with a mint leaf and enjoy. (Serves 2.)

The Chubby Vegetarian Cookbook Release

This past Saturday afternoon, we opened the box that contained 2 books from the first printing of our second cookbook, The Chubby Vegetarian: 100 Inspired Vegetable Recipes for the Modern Table (Susan Schadt Press, 2016). And then today, we arrived home to find 2 more huge boxes of books waiting for us! We can't wait for you to see our work and to read the beautiful foreword by our friend P. Allen Smith.

The new cookbook will be released November 1, and we have some fun times planned this fall so we can all celebrate together. If you'd like to get a signed copy from us in Memphis, here are some event details:

Book signing at the Memphis Food and Wine Festival, Memphis Botanic Garden, Saturday, October 15, 6-10 p.m.

Book signing at The Booksellers of Laurelwood, Thursday, October 27, 6:30 p.m. This is the first public event for the cookbook's release, and it's nice that it's ahead of the 'real' book release date. The folks at Booksellers were so good to us when our first book hit the shelves in 2013, and we're thrilled to be invited back. We hope to see y'all there!

Book release party at The Second Line, Sunday, November 6, 5:00-7:30 p.m. Stop by and see what the inimitable Chef Kelly English has planned for all of us -- you just might get to sample our TCV Debris Po Boy, which he's had on the menu for a while now, and lately, he's been talking about fixing some BYA Broccoli (in lieu of the usual BYA Shrimp!).

Some other possible food truck, farmers market, store appearance, and cooking class opportunities are in the works throughout the holiday season; we can't wait to let you know what else is coming up on the calendar!

You may pre-order our book from any fine book retailer. It really helps authors like us for you to do that. It's especially helpful if you go into your local bookseller and ask for our title by name. The store will then stock the book and we'll get to let more people know about our particular brand of vegetable-driven cuisine.

Preorder from: Powell's, Booksellers of Laurelwood, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Hudson Booksellers, Books-A-Million, Parnassus, or your local bookstore.

Our Make-Ahead Dishes for IHA's Inspired Home blog

Thank you to the International Housewares Association for partnering with us on this blog post. We were compensated for our time and were thrilled to be able to keep the products we used in creating new recipes for the accompanying article. As usual, all opinions expressed are our own. 

Hey, check out our new piece about 3 great make-ahead dishes for crazy-busy weeknights on The International Housewares Association's Inspired Home blog! We made our favorite enchiladas, a hearty mulligatawny, and a bunch of energy cookies. We loved choosing recipes from our forthcoming second cookbook, The Chubby Vegetarian: 100 Inspired Vegetable Recipes for the Modern Table, for this. 

Both of us have really appreciated having good stuff in the freezer now that summer's coming to a close and we have less time to cook from scratch each night. We think it's always good to set aside a little time to prepare a few things over the weekend in order to  be able to eat well all week long. We've always meant to be organized enough to plan ahead and do that, so this was a good reason to finally try it.