Gooey and slimy, never! Scrumptious? Oh yes! Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net/Rawich
Okra ode
Ran in the column "Ravenous" in the Woodstock Times, Kingston Times and Highland Post Pioneer, August 25, 2005
Can hate turn to love? I mean, besides in Harlequin romances? I say that when it comes to okra it can.
Growing on sky-high plants bursting with striking butter-yellow flowers, this relative of hibiscus, hollyhock, rose of Sharon and cotton is a controversial creature. Although its dainty pods are as fuzzy as the down on a baby's cheek and their cut slices look like spiky star-like pentagons with tiny round moonseeds inside, some people despise them. A lot of people, actually.
“There will be world peace before there is agreement about okra,” said Brooks Hamaker this month in an online forum of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters. People who know okra are often passionate about it one way or another. They love it as comfort food from their childhoods in Africa or India or the Southern U.S., or they detest the stuff, describing its slippery, pearly insides as “mucilage” or “slime” rather than “the deliciously smooth, light, clean slick that okra exudes,” as did Elizabeth Schneider in Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables: A Commonsense Guide (Morrow, 1998).
I'm in the pro-okra camp. These days I think okra's okay, although I didn't always feel that way. When I was a little kid I loathed it. My parents raised my sisters and me in Vermont, but they grew up in Arkansas and so sometimes we had whole okra plain boiled at supper. I found it nearly as vile as the mealy liver we had to eat sometimes, too. I wasn't a picky kid at all--okra and liver were the only things I refused--but I thought okra was the ultimate gross-out food. I can still taste its bland greenness, the goo that oozed out when I cut into it.
Years later I bravely tried some fried okra in a cafeteria in Arkansas. I don't know how I dared, but I did, and it surprised me that I liked it: slime-free, sweet and crunchy. That was my first inkling that the stuff could be edible, even good.
Later still I discovered that okra was great in gumbo, and even started to buy it, when I could find it, for my standard seafood and andouille sausage version. For a town festival in Red Hook a few years back, some friends and I had a Cajun booth complete with accordion music, for which I made gallons and gallons of gumbo, commissioning bushels of okra from Brittany Hollow Farm in Rhinebeck. It took a few years before I felt like cooking gumbo again. But now I love to make it, and although it takes time to do the roux right, it's always satisfying, although I don't think okra's flavor and texture really come to the fore in gumbo, which is almost as good thickened with filé powder instead.
Lately I've been finding okra a lot more often than I used to, in piles at the local farmers market, even at the supermarket. Now that I have decided that I like the stuff, a lot, I often make a tasty dish inspired by mayai wara bhinda from the Indians of Uganda, from one of my favorite cookbooks, World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey (Clarkson Potter, 1999). I sauté slices of okra, then sliced onion, then chopped tomatoes, then crushed garlic, lime juice, coriander, cumin, turmeric and cayenne, tossing in fresh cilantro at the end and serving it with Basmati rice. Jaffrey, who skips my onion and cilantro, suggests serving the dish with bread, eggs, bean or pea dishes, yogurt relish or chutney.
Okra was born in Ethiopia, where they split the pods lengthwise and stew them with red onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, cardamom and hot chiles. Okra is all over Africa, “the continent's culinary totem,” according to Jessica B. Harris in The Africa Cookbook (Simon & Shuster, 1998). It has spread to other regions of the world where Africans have settled, voluntarily or not. “Wherever okra points its green tip, Africa has passed,” said Harris, who has an okra pod engraved on her stationery because it is “so emblematic of the cooking of Africa and the African diaspora.”
In Egypt, in the northern reaches of the African continent, they stew okra in onion and beef stock, or make a sweet and sour version steeped in honey and lemon. In the Caribbean, full of the descendants of Africans, the Trinidadian coocoo is a sort of polenta mold with okra, as is the Barbadian Meal-Corn Cou-Cou that Austin Clarke lauds in his wonderful tale of traditional Caribbean life called Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit (The New Press, 1999). I spent a week in Barbados a few years ago and wish I had tried some. But when I lived in Brooklyn and could easily get to Caribbean neighborhoods for ingredients, I made callaloo, a rich soup made with okra, the thick leaves of the taro plant and quantities of crabmeat.
In the South of this country okra is served plain steamed, sliced and stewed with tomatoes, and shallow- or deep-fried in cornmeal. Limpin' Susan (as opposed to Hoppin' John, a classic southern black-eyed pea dish) features okra with shrimp and rice.
Okra is a prodigious grower. It can even rival zucchini, I've heard, growing fast and needing to be picked often, before it gets too long and woody, usually when it's so hot that its unpleasant to be outdoors. But like the zucchini that I fail to grow well, I don't grow good okra either. Last summer, inspired after seeing a lovely six-foot, yellow-flowered plant in Arkansas, I gave it a try and planted some seeds. Although in Barbados they call them “okra trees,” my lone okra plant only got half a foot tall and produced one and a half pods. I consoled myself by adding them to a quart from the farmers market and sautéed it all with coarse cornmeal and chopped tomatoes in bacon fat, thanks to Harris' Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons (Ballantine, 1991).
Okra is best the day it's picked, and like fish doesn't keep well in the fridge more than a day or two before it loses its allure. You don't want it flabby or brittle either, or so big it's a candidate for the rope factory (overgrown okra really is made into rope, according to Schneider). Some say you can't cook it in copper, aluminum or cast iron, or it will go bad or discolor, but I use my beloved cast iron pans all the time and my okra comes out fine.
I'm not generally a proponent of vegetables undercooked and crunchy. I like my veggies, like my fish, either raw or cooked, not in-between. But when it comes to okra I think it's better to err on the side of undercooking, to enjoy its qualities at their best and avoid gumminess, although “it's supposed to be slimy,” said Harris. But in a savory stew like gumbo, I think, you can simmer it for a long time, further bestowing its qualities upon the dish.
Pondering okra, and remembering how I once hated it plain, I decided to try it that way for the first time since I was a kid. At the farmers market the other day I selected some freshly picked, pristine young pods to cook simply, for a true test to see if I still hated plain okra. I rinsed them and trimmed the stems but left the teeny tadpole tails alone. I put them in the steamer basket over boiling water and although the vendor suggested ten to fifteen minutes of steaming, my instinct told me to do them for only five.
Then I tossed them in a generous pat of butter, salt and freshly ground pepper, steeled myself and tasted a pod.
I felt no revulsion. I didn't gag or feel horror at any of the gross gooeyness I still recall from childhood. My first impression was pleasing: green taste, good body, tender but firm, appealing texture to the carapace, tiny seeds that barely popped on my tongue and a bit of only slightly stewy mouthfeel like the outside of an oxtail, quite pleasant.
They were okay, these okra, even good. I wanted to save some for my napping husband but I kept eating them. They grew better with each pod that I popped into my mouth, velvety pointy end first, kind of like a kiss.
My frame of reference has changed since I recoiled at okra plain on a plate, when I didn't yet know kisses. I think okra pods have to be dewy fresh and small to cook them this way, to insure such exquisite tenderness and minimal goo; if they're old and overgrown that kiss might feel more like the slurp of a St. Bernard.
Now surfing along at the fringes of middle age, I have come to love something that is for me both as old as my earliest memories and new to my experience: the fleshy earthy crunch of okra's skin, the tiny edible round seeds, yes, even the slippery insides, what some okra lovers call “the sticky juice.”
And I will cook and eat more okra.
Ran in the column "Ravenous" in the Woodstock Times, Kingston Times and Highland Post Pioneer, August 25, 2005
Can hate turn to love? I mean, besides in Harlequin romances? I say that when it comes to okra it can.
Growing on sky-high plants bursting with striking butter-yellow flowers, this relative of hibiscus, hollyhock, rose of Sharon and cotton is a controversial creature. Although its dainty pods are as fuzzy as the down on a baby's cheek and their cut slices look like spiky star-like pentagons with tiny round moonseeds inside, some people despise them. A lot of people, actually.
“There will be world peace before there is agreement about okra,” said Brooks Hamaker this month in an online forum of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters. People who know okra are often passionate about it one way or another. They love it as comfort food from their childhoods in Africa or India or the Southern U.S., or they detest the stuff, describing its slippery, pearly insides as “mucilage” or “slime” rather than “the deliciously smooth, light, clean slick that okra exudes,” as did Elizabeth Schneider in Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables: A Commonsense Guide (Morrow, 1998).
I'm in the pro-okra camp. These days I think okra's okay, although I didn't always feel that way. When I was a little kid I loathed it. My parents raised my sisters and me in Vermont, but they grew up in Arkansas and so sometimes we had whole okra plain boiled at supper. I found it nearly as vile as the mealy liver we had to eat sometimes, too. I wasn't a picky kid at all--okra and liver were the only things I refused--but I thought okra was the ultimate gross-out food. I can still taste its bland greenness, the goo that oozed out when I cut into it.
Years later I bravely tried some fried okra in a cafeteria in Arkansas. I don't know how I dared, but I did, and it surprised me that I liked it: slime-free, sweet and crunchy. That was my first inkling that the stuff could be edible, even good.
Later still I discovered that okra was great in gumbo, and even started to buy it, when I could find it, for my standard seafood and andouille sausage version. For a town festival in Red Hook a few years back, some friends and I had a Cajun booth complete with accordion music, for which I made gallons and gallons of gumbo, commissioning bushels of okra from Brittany Hollow Farm in Rhinebeck. It took a few years before I felt like cooking gumbo again. But now I love to make it, and although it takes time to do the roux right, it's always satisfying, although I don't think okra's flavor and texture really come to the fore in gumbo, which is almost as good thickened with filé powder instead.
Lately I've been finding okra a lot more often than I used to, in piles at the local farmers market, even at the supermarket. Now that I have decided that I like the stuff, a lot, I often make a tasty dish inspired by mayai wara bhinda from the Indians of Uganda, from one of my favorite cookbooks, World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey (Clarkson Potter, 1999). I sauté slices of okra, then sliced onion, then chopped tomatoes, then crushed garlic, lime juice, coriander, cumin, turmeric and cayenne, tossing in fresh cilantro at the end and serving it with Basmati rice. Jaffrey, who skips my onion and cilantro, suggests serving the dish with bread, eggs, bean or pea dishes, yogurt relish or chutney.
Okra was born in Ethiopia, where they split the pods lengthwise and stew them with red onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, cardamom and hot chiles. Okra is all over Africa, “the continent's culinary totem,” according to Jessica B. Harris in The Africa Cookbook (Simon & Shuster, 1998). It has spread to other regions of the world where Africans have settled, voluntarily or not. “Wherever okra points its green tip, Africa has passed,” said Harris, who has an okra pod engraved on her stationery because it is “so emblematic of the cooking of Africa and the African diaspora.”
In Egypt, in the northern reaches of the African continent, they stew okra in onion and beef stock, or make a sweet and sour version steeped in honey and lemon. In the Caribbean, full of the descendants of Africans, the Trinidadian coocoo is a sort of polenta mold with okra, as is the Barbadian Meal-Corn Cou-Cou that Austin Clarke lauds in his wonderful tale of traditional Caribbean life called Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit (The New Press, 1999). I spent a week in Barbados a few years ago and wish I had tried some. But when I lived in Brooklyn and could easily get to Caribbean neighborhoods for ingredients, I made callaloo, a rich soup made with okra, the thick leaves of the taro plant and quantities of crabmeat.
In the South of this country okra is served plain steamed, sliced and stewed with tomatoes, and shallow- or deep-fried in cornmeal. Limpin' Susan (as opposed to Hoppin' John, a classic southern black-eyed pea dish) features okra with shrimp and rice.
Okra is a prodigious grower. It can even rival zucchini, I've heard, growing fast and needing to be picked often, before it gets too long and woody, usually when it's so hot that its unpleasant to be outdoors. But like the zucchini that I fail to grow well, I don't grow good okra either. Last summer, inspired after seeing a lovely six-foot, yellow-flowered plant in Arkansas, I gave it a try and planted some seeds. Although in Barbados they call them “okra trees,” my lone okra plant only got half a foot tall and produced one and a half pods. I consoled myself by adding them to a quart from the farmers market and sautéed it all with coarse cornmeal and chopped tomatoes in bacon fat, thanks to Harris' Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons (Ballantine, 1991).
Okra is best the day it's picked, and like fish doesn't keep well in the fridge more than a day or two before it loses its allure. You don't want it flabby or brittle either, or so big it's a candidate for the rope factory (overgrown okra really is made into rope, according to Schneider). Some say you can't cook it in copper, aluminum or cast iron, or it will go bad or discolor, but I use my beloved cast iron pans all the time and my okra comes out fine.
I'm not generally a proponent of vegetables undercooked and crunchy. I like my veggies, like my fish, either raw or cooked, not in-between. But when it comes to okra I think it's better to err on the side of undercooking, to enjoy its qualities at their best and avoid gumminess, although “it's supposed to be slimy,” said Harris. But in a savory stew like gumbo, I think, you can simmer it for a long time, further bestowing its qualities upon the dish.
Pondering okra, and remembering how I once hated it plain, I decided to try it that way for the first time since I was a kid. At the farmers market the other day I selected some freshly picked, pristine young pods to cook simply, for a true test to see if I still hated plain okra. I rinsed them and trimmed the stems but left the teeny tadpole tails alone. I put them in the steamer basket over boiling water and although the vendor suggested ten to fifteen minutes of steaming, my instinct told me to do them for only five.
Then I tossed them in a generous pat of butter, salt and freshly ground pepper, steeled myself and tasted a pod.
I felt no revulsion. I didn't gag or feel horror at any of the gross gooeyness I still recall from childhood. My first impression was pleasing: green taste, good body, tender but firm, appealing texture to the carapace, tiny seeds that barely popped on my tongue and a bit of only slightly stewy mouthfeel like the outside of an oxtail, quite pleasant.
They were okay, these okra, even good. I wanted to save some for my napping husband but I kept eating them. They grew better with each pod that I popped into my mouth, velvety pointy end first, kind of like a kiss.
My frame of reference has changed since I recoiled at okra plain on a plate, when I didn't yet know kisses. I think okra pods have to be dewy fresh and small to cook them this way, to insure such exquisite tenderness and minimal goo; if they're old and overgrown that kiss might feel more like the slurp of a St. Bernard.
Now surfing along at the fringes of middle age, I have come to love something that is for me both as old as my earliest memories and new to my experience: the fleshy earthy crunch of okra's skin, the tiny edible round seeds, yes, even the slippery insides, what some okra lovers call “the sticky juice.”
And I will cook and eat more okra.
