Simply Khmer's Bok-Lo-Hong

This sweet, sour, and spicy salad is eaten in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. To serve this salad, garnish your plate with a small piece of cabbage, a large piece of lettuce and a generous amount of basil. Scoop the salad with pieces of cabbage, place a plentiful amount of your papaya salad onto the place and top off with a basil leaf!  Enjoy! 
Ingredients

1/2 green papaya
1 garlic clove
1 fresh chili
1 tsp. tamarind powder
1-1/2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. shrimp paste
1/2 tomato
1/4 lime
2 tsp. fish sauce

For Garnish:
Basil
Large lettuce leaf
Small piece of cabbage

Directions

Prepare Papaya
Take the 1/2 green papaya and use a spoon to remove all of the seeds. Once seeded, completely peel the papaya. Using a hand-shredding tool, shred the papaya lengthwise.

Prepare Papaya Salad
Place the garlic in a mortar and crush it with a pestle. Remove the stem of the chili and add it to the mortar. (Tip: keep your face as far as possible while you crush the chili, as it might splash up.) Add the tamarind powder, sugar, and shrimp paste to the crushed garlic and chili. Mash and mix everything with the pestle.

Roughly chop your tomato. Add it to the mortar and mash the ingredients with the pestle. Add your shredded papaya to the mixture and continue to mash.

After about a minute of mashing, squeeze the lime and add the fish sauce to the mixture. Continue to mash. Using a large spoon, mix the ingredients in the mortar until everything is equally mashed.

Garnish your plate with a small piece of cabbage, a large piece of lettuce and a generous amount of basil. Place a plentiful amount of your papaya salad onto the plate.

Serves: 2

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Sam Neang and Denise Ban are the chefs and owners of Simply Khmer, a Cambodian restaurant in Lowell, Mass. They shared this recipe with us when they were featured as our guests on Neighborhood Kitchens.