Green papaya and mango: unripe fruit takes place of vegetables in salads, entrees

Nation's Restaurant News, Sept 29, 2003 by Florence Fabricant

Green, or unripe, papaya and mango--which are used in Southeast Asian cooking, usually shredded, sliced or julienned, to make slaw-like salads--have started showing up in non-Asian venues. When one considers how many Asian ingredients, from wasabi to lemon grass, have become commonplace seasonings these days, it is probably inevitable that green mango and papaya would make it to the plate. Unlike the ripe fruit, the green versions are crisp, easily shredded and take to a variety of flavorings. They function more like vegetables than fruits.

In Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Cambodian restaurants green papaya and mango often are used as underpinnings for squid salads and salads seasoned with dried shrimp. Malaysia Kopitiam in Washington, D.C., serves a crispy squid salad with lemon grass dressing, green apples, green mango, shallots and mint ill a vinaigrette made with lime. Typhoon in Redmond, Wash., has a classic salad of green papaya with dried shrimp and peanuts in a garlic-lime dressing.

Green Papaya, a Southeast Asian operation in New York, has a green-papaya salad as its signature, combining the julienned fruit with carrots, long beans, sun-dried baby shrimp, tomatoes, caramelized peanuts and chiles in a garlic-lime dressing. And Green Papaya in Bethesda, Md., offers a similar salad, one made with julienned lotus root in addition to the green papaya.

Such fusion operations as Crustacean in San Francisco also capitalize on the allure of those unripe fruits. Crustacean's rice paper shrimp roll served with a spicy peanut sauce has green mango in its filling, and its green-papaya salad comes with calamari in a spicy vinaigrette. Ponzu, another San Francisco fusion spot, offers cool shrimp and green-mango spring rolls with a tamarind dip.

Union Pacific in New York garnishes its curry of baby chicken with sweet rice and green papaya. At Roy's in San Francisco, the Malaysian chicken satay sticks come with a green-papaya salad and a Thai dipping sauce made with fish sauce.

And going farther afield, Herbivore in San Francisco, for example, serves a nontraditional green-papaya salad with tomatoes, green beans, red cabbage, carrots, onions, peanuts and lettuce, all tied together with an Asian lemon grass-ginger dressing. At Peninsula in Chicago, an Oriental chicken wrap comes with green-papaya slaw. The Laguna Grill & Martini Bar in Atlantic City offers a spring roll with green-mango chutney and wasabi mayonnaise.

At the Four Seasons in New York, the signature roast duck is always on the menu, but its garnishes change. Recently, it came with green papaya in a black cherry sauce. At Montage in Aspen. Colo., the house-smoked duck is served with a spinach-almond curry sauce and pickled green mango.

Boulevard in San Francisco features a dish of crispy coconut-lime calamari with green-papaya and pomelo salad. La Caravelle in New York serves steamed black sea bass with cucumbers, basmati rice and green-papaya julienne in an orange nage. The chef, Troy Dupuy, likes the slight tartness of the green papaya and the crispness it adds when folded into the rice.

At Triomphe in New York, striped bass marinated in ginger and chile comes with jasmine rice, grilled leeks and a salad of green papaya. And at Kevin in Chicago, the tartare of tuna with wasabi is paired with a salad of hamachi, herbs, chile, lime, green papaya and sesame on a menu that also offers seared ostrich and roasted quail.

Zealous in Chicago takes the green papaya to India and the Middle East, with its red dal falafel with pickled green papaya, raita and cumin-seed naan. Another Indian take, this time on green mango, can be found at Tanjore in Cambridge, Mass., where the dish called balti-spiced vegetables is made with mixed vegetables cooked with green mango, herbs and lentils. It's unusual to find green mango cooked, not raw.

But perhaps the best example of the mainstreaming of green papaya and mango is at City Bakery in New York, a place that offers muffins and scones, old-fashioned ice-cream sodas, barbecue on a buffet and a spicy green papaya salad.