Papaya and Black Bean Salad

Many years ago, there was a Korean restaurant that was always so crowded, we knew we had to try it.  Unfortunately, neither one of us had eaten at a Korean restaurant before (our choices in our hometown were Italian, Italian, Diner, Hamburger, Italian), so we had no idea what some(most) of the food was.

Tim, ever the adventurous eater, threw caution to the wind and started ordering things he couldn’t pronounce even if he’d had a year’s worth of language instruction at Berlitz.  I, on the other hand, made the waiter explain, in graphic detail, what every single item on the menu was, stopping him before he even got halfway through most of the descriptions when he used certain buzzwords like: hot, spicy, and anything that had to do with body parts.

A few minutes after we ordered, the wait staff started bringing miscellaneous food items to the table, with no explanation as to what they were, or even whose dinner they were a part of.

I gingerly started poking my fork into the various dishes to see if anything poked back. One particularly gelatinous mass wiggled in protest when I jabbed at it, another clung to my fork like superglue, and a third looked like a science experiment gone horribly wrong.

Impatient with my timidity, Tim grabbed the one thing that looked sort of familiar, some kind of cabbage roll, and took a huge bite.

Big mistake.  Huge.  Enormous mistake.

He had bitten into some super duper spicy Kim-chee, which was apparently like swallowing hot lava.  He immediately started guzzling water like it was going out of style and twitching around in his seat like he was sitting on a lit firecracker.  I believe at one point, he grabbed a pitcher from a passing waiter and practically poured it over his head trying to drink the whole thing in one gulp.  All in all, it made pretty good dinner theater for everyone else in the restaurant, judging by their barely contained giggles, but Tim was smoking for about a week afterwards.

So, when a friend gave me a papaya recently, something I had eaten before in fruit salad, but had never tried using at home, I decided to be brave and go for it…and use it in a savory dish that is a main course. Not as brave as downing a chunk of the sun, but then again, you can eat this salad without needing a firehose.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups chopped papaya
• 1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 Tablespoons chopped cilantro (measure after chopping)
• 1/2 cup diced red onion
• 1/2 cup quinoa (I used multi-colored)
• squeeze of lime
• salt to taste
• Optional: jalapeno

Directions:

1. Cook quinoa in water according to directions on package.  Set aside to cool.
2. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients, including quinoa when it cools down, and toss.  Refrigerate till ready to serve.

Serving suggestions:

Serve with avocado slices and/or my cucumber avocado sauce (you can thicken it more by adding more avocado if you’d like, but I like it as sort of a dressing drizzled over each serving.)

Enjoy!