Not-green papaya salad

A couple of weeks ago when I was in Sydney I tried green papaya salad for the first time. It was delicious, and I was determined to have a go at making it at home.

I bought the greenest and hardest papaya I could find …

… but when I cut it open it was perfectly ripe. Still, although it's not crunchy, I thought to myself, and won't have the right texture, I may as well have a go anyway, because it's sure to taste nice.

So I did. I shredded half of the papaya on my mandoline …

… and made a dressing of garlic, a chilli from the freezer, some brown sugar (not too much, because the ripe papaya is sweet enough), some fish sauce , some lime juice, and a chopped tomato.

I bashed the chili and garlic pretty well, but left the tomato bits reasonably whole:

Then mixed it with the papaya …

… and ate it with some pork meatloaf sort of stuff:

Obviously the texture wasn't right, and there was much more papaya flavour than there should have been, but in spite of that it was good.

I really don't think we get green papayas here, I've never seen the salad on a menu in New Zealand. A pity.

I'm writing this while I'm letting some pastry rest - I'm making another thing I tried for the first time in Australia the other week - sfogliatelle. Fingers crossed I'll be back tomorrow with some photos of them.