Adventures in SE Asian cooking, part 2

This is the last of the Singapore posts, which is probably for the better as I'm sadly no longer there, but mired back on the cold cold East coast. Believe me when I say I'm figuring out how to get back to SE Asia stat (were it not for this whole... work thing, I may have chucked my passport and just stayed).

So. No banana blossom salad. What to do? Given that I'd already made the vinaigrette, well, I thought a green papaya salad may be nice, since it'd be essentially the same thing as the banana blossom salad sans the gross banana blossom part. (By this point, the making of the salad had been ceded fully over to me.) So off to the market I went.. and me and markets are a bad combination, because I like food and I like to buy food.

Two grocery bags later (remember, I went with the intent to buy green papayas. Yet somehow I ended up with tons of stuff) I was back in the apartment, cut open the greenest papaya I could find at the market... and FOILED AGAIN! Even though I tried to choose an unripe papaya, it had already started to ripen. What to do, what to do. I came up with a rather brilliant improvisation, if I do say so myself. Instead of a green papaya salad, I instead sliced up the ripe papaya and tossed the lime-sugar-fish sauce vinaigrette with some Japanese greens (for the vegetarian at the table, I omitted the fish sauce and used salt instead - not as tasty, but it worked). I laid the papaya out on the plate, mounded the Japanese greens in a pile atop the papaya and then garnished the dish with some starfruit (also an impulse buy at the market... see what I said about me and food shopping?). Some fried shallots and chopped peanuts were scattered atop.. et voilà, a rather attractive salad was born.

The rest of the meal was great also - deep fried tofu with bean sprouts in a chili sauce, vegetarian green curry, and a fresh upside-down pineapple cake (seriously, the only dessert I consumed the entire trip). Some champers and wine were had as well, and it was a lovely last meal to have abroad.