Kids Make Smothered Okra

There are many vegetables that kids don't care for but grow to love as adults. Okra may be that rare vegetable that works just the other way around: kids seem to love it, and only learn to hate it when they get older.

Okra originated in Africa and famously gave the world the stew "gumbo," taking its name from the native word for okra. Okra followed the slave trade into the New World, finding a home all over the South and in the Caribbean islands. Okra loves a hot and humid climate and grows very well right here in the District of Columbia.

Some people prefer their okra fried, to eliminate the gooey-ness that sometimes accompanies this relative of the mallow plant. While our "food appreciation" classes are still island hopping on our virtual world food tour, we tried this classic preparation variously called "smothered okra" or "creole okra," in which okra is simmered very simply with other vegetables. We like to serve it with plain rice.


There are no herbs or spices in this preparation other than salt and pepper. You might be surprised how full of flavor it is. Pairing okra with onions, tomatoes and corn seems to be a perfect combination.


2 tablespoons bacon grease (or substitute extra-virgin olive oil)

1/2 yellow onion, cut into medium dice

1/2 green bell pepper, cut into medium dice

26 okra pods (each about 3 inches long), stem removed and cut on an angle into 1/2-inch pieces

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes, with juice (or two ripe tomatoes, seeded and diced)

1 cup corn kernels

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste


In a heavy skillet over moderately low heat, heat the bacon grease or olive oil and add the onion and green pepper. Cover and sweat the vegetables until they are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the okra, tomatoes and corn, cover and cook until the okra is fully cooked and tender, about 20 minutes. (The okra should turn an olive-green color). Season with salt and pepper and serve hot with brown rice.

Lunch

Leftover lamb shoulder chop with Romesco sauce, bulgar with lemon and black olives, smothered okra with corn and diced tomatoes.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

We do love our leftovers, although this does sound like an add combo at first blush--a sort of Mediterranean-Caribbean fusion. In fact, it all went down quite nicely. The okra, of course, is from the garden. The season will soon be over for them, but we couldn't have asked for more from our sturdy band of okra plants. We've stewed them, curried them and pickled them and still they keep coming. What a great vegetable.

Pickled Okra

I recently heard from two friends who had very different reactions to the jars of pickled okra I had given them. One exclaimed how wonderfully spicy the pickles were. The other wondered why hers were so mild.

I puzzled over this for a while, then realized that one of these friends had received a jar that had been processed at least two months earlier, while the second friend had pickles that were practically brand new.

Moral of the story: to get the full benefit of those zesty spices, you really need to let the pickles rest for a few weeks--or months.

The recipe I use is from "The Art of Accompaniment" by Jeffree Sapp Brooks. It couldn't be much simpler: You just pack the okra, spices, garlic and chili peppers in a clean jar, pour it a hot brine of vinegar, water and salt, then cap the jars and process them in a pot of boiling water.

This recipe is enough to make four pints, but I don't always have two pounds of okra laying around. For me, it's easier to simply harvest what the garden offers as the okra grow to the right size, then make a quart of pickles when I've gathered enough. But here's the original recipe.

2 pounds fresh okra
2 2/3 cups cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 talespoons sal
4 garlic cloves, crushed and pealed
4 dried chili pods (I use ripe red jalapenos from the garden, seeded)
4 small bay leaves
2 tablespoon pickling spices

Divide the okra and other ingredients into 4 clean pint jars, or 2 quart jars. (It helps to pack some of the okra first stem-end-down, then continue packing stem-end up.) ring the vinegar, water and salt to a boil. Ladle brine into jars. Screw on caps and process in a boiling water bath-- 10 minutes for pint jars, 15 minutes for quart jars.

Store in a cool, dark place at least one month before opening.

Sweet Potato Leaves

Every once in a while you learn something about the plant kingdom that makes you stop and think, I need to grow that.

So it was with sweet potato leaves, or when I learned that sweet potato leaves are edible. At the time, I did nothing about it. But on a recent visit to One Straw Farm in Baltimore County, owner Joan Norman mentioned that she had been selling sweet potato leaves in the farmers market. She said she had heard about them at an agriculture conference from a man from Africa.

Suddenly I was not only glad I had planted sweet potatoes, but made a priority of finding some way of working the leaves onto our dinner table. The occasion finally arrived last week when I struggled to find something green in the garden to put in our newest most favorite dish, curried okra. We're still harvesting okra on an almost daily basis and this stew with coconut milk, tomatoes and potatoes (basically, anything we can forage from the garden) proved to be a perfect place to use some of the Tuscan kale we were growing.

Well, the kale is gone, but it turns out sweet potato leaves work even better . They have a mild but dense flavor that reminds me a little of purslane. They stand up very well to cooking, maintaining their dark green color and a pleasantly easy texture. As a bonus, the leaves are a good source of vitamins A and C. And like purslane, they can be eaten raw.

Being a vine, the sweet potato plant produces a prodigious amount of leaves in addition to the tasty tuber we'll be harvesting later. At one time I was cursing our sweet potatoes for escaping their bed and traveling all over the yard where I needed to mow. They've climbed up, over and around the tomato cages. Now I'm cheering them on. I say, give us all the leaves you want.

If you are making the okra stew I posted about recently, just add a heaping cup (or two) or sweet potato leaves cut into a chiffonade instead of the kale originally called for. And if you planted sweet potatoes, be happy knowing that you have an almost endless supply of nutritious leaves.

More Okra

If the only kind of okra you know is what you see in the supermarket, it may be you've never been inspired to eat it. What passes for okra in the store is typically awful looking. Even in our local Whole Foods the okra looks to be weeks old--all shriveled and covered with brown blotches. I don't know how the produce manager can sleep at night.

Okra should be firm and bright green (there is also a burgundy okra) without any blemishes. This is the kind of okra we are harvesting in our garden right now. The pods seem to grow overnight--we can hardly keep up.

There are so many things to like about okra it's hard to know where to start. The plant is related to the hibiscus. It makes beautiful flowers on thick, upright stalks. But it also has a strange, almost prehistoric aspect to it. The pods grow long and pointy (they're called "lady fingers" in parts of Asia) with distinctive ridges. Inside the pods, the seeds are perfectly round and eventually large and black like buckshot. The leaves are very large and elaborately notched. As the plant grows, pods form in the crooks between branches and main stem. Pick a pod and the plant keeps growing taller, forming more branches and more pods.

Some people don't like okra because it has a mucilaginous quality, or slime. My okra doesn't seem to be particularly slimy. But even if it were, you'd hardly notice because my favorite way of cooking it is a sort of stew with Caribbean origins: sauteed onion and green bell pepper, okra, corn off the cob and diced tomato. I've been making huge quantities of it lately and assumed readers were tired of hearing about it. So this morning I went through my cookbook collection looking for an alternate preparation.

You may have surmised by now that I am a pretty lazy cook. Slow would be another way to put it. I prefer foods that don't require a lot of fuss and tend to cook themselves. It just so happens that these kinds of foods--cooking slowly all by themselves in a pot on the stove or in the oven--also tend to develop great flavor.

Okra is well suited to this kind of cooking. You'll find it in all sorts of soups and stews. I spent the better part of the morning conducting a survey of okra recipes from my cookbook library. The first thing you notice is how many of the world's best-known authors completely avoid the subject of okra. James Peterson, in "Vegetables," describes an interesting okra salad with soy and sesame seeds, and a miso soup with okra and shiitake mushrooms. (You need to blanch the okra before dressing it as a salad.) "Joy of Cooking" and "Fannie Farmer Cookbook" give classic recipes for okra stews, and of course okra gumbos are standard.

But you really need to dig into the ethnic cookbooks to discover the full range of okra uses. Paula Wolfort describes some delicious sounding lamb stews and tagines with okra. In one treatment, the okra pods are stitched together like a necklace so they can be easily removed at the appropriate moment to cook down the remaining stew ingredients. Jessica Harris delivers numerous recipes for okra stews and soups in her various Caribbean and Creole cookbooks. I noticed the use of greens, such as callaloo, root vegetables, curries and even coconut milk in some of these recipes. They reminded me of an Indian dish I made a while back where the okra was first fried, then tossed with yogurt and chickpea flour and toasted spices.

Still, of the dozens of recipes I looked at, nothing struck me as being exactly the dish I was searching for. Finally it dawned on me that I just might have to make up my own dish, using the ingredients right outside my front door. I had more okra to pick, potatoes already dug during a recent weeding adventure and two Tuscan kale plants that have been badly neglected. As I sliced onion and chopped garlic, a dish gradually came into focus.

Here is my version of stewed okra curry with tomatoes and coconut milk.

1 pound white or red boiling potatoes, cut into bite-size pieces

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, diced medium

2 cloves garlic, chopped fine

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes (or substitute fresh tomatoes)

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

large fistful kale leaves, washed, separated from stems and cut into chiffonade

1 pound okra pods, trimmed and cut on an angle into 1/2-inch pieces

1 cup coconut milk

1 teaspoon curry powder

Cook the potatoes until just tender in a large saucepan filled with salted water. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a heavy pot or Dutch oven and cook the onion and garlic, seasoned with salt, gently until the onion is soft, about 8 minutes. Add tomatoes with their juices, red pepper, kale, okra and the cooked potatoes, drained. Stir in coconut milk and curry powder. Bring pot to a simmer, cover and cook until okra and kale are tender, about 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning and serve, either as a side dish or over brown rice.

As an option, you can garnish the stew with chopped fresh tomatoes. For a more classic curry, you could also add toasted spices such as cumin and mustard seed. Since we keep coconut milk and curry powder in the pantry there was no need to go shopping at all. I deduct a couple of points for getting two pots dirty. Otherwise, this okra dish fits perfectly into our gardening scheme. It's a winner.

First Okra

In case there was any doubt that vegetables fresh out of the garden beat the pants off the store-bought kind, we harvested our first okra the other day and made a big batch of smothered okra. This is our go-to recipe for okra flavor and simplicity. I don't know how you improve upon it: sauteed onions and green bell pepper, sliced okra, fresh white corn off the cob and diced tomatoes. Season with coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper. Who thought of it, where all the flavor comes from, I'm not sure, but this dish is pure magic. A wedge of fresh buttermilk corn bread would be the perfect accompaniment--and a complete meal. (If you are a meat eater, you might add a spoonful of bacon grease to the skillet to pick the flavor up a notch, but it is completely unnecessary.)

With its long, pointy ridged pods, okra is one of the stranger vegetables in the garden. It's in the mallow family, related to cotton and hibiscus. Completely separate from the pods and broad, notched leaves, okra produces these beautiful yellow flowers that open in the morning and close again at night.

I often find myself crawling around on all fours in the garden--weeding, trimming edges, harvesting. A good place to pause is next to the okra bed where you can sit in the cool of the morning and contemplate an okra flower. Often there's a bee or wasp climbing inside, looking for breakfast. And who wouldn't? It looks like the perfect place to hang out.

Smothered Okra

Our farmer friend Brett sends out occasional notices about what he'll be displaying at the Saturday farmers market. This week it was okra, which immediately got my attention. Hard to believe we are already harvesting okra (my own plants aren't nearly there yet). So I was primed to rush there and get some.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the farmers market this week. I started calculating how much gas I would be using to get there. The market where Brett sets up shop is not any of the ones within walking distance of our house here in the District of Columbia. It's five miles away in Chevy Chase D.C., almost in Maryland. In fact, the Chevy Chase farmers market is not far from the drop-off point where we pick up the food boxes Brett leaves for our winter CSAs.

With gasoline now above $4 per gallon (I know, for much of the world, especially in Europe, this seems laughably cheap--we don't tax gas nearly as much as they do) five miles isn't anything to take lightly anymore. It dawned on me a couple of weeks ago when I ran to the market for some of Brett's free-range eggs that when I included the cost of a two-way trip, one dozen eggs cost me an extra $2. Make that $6 a dozen instead of $4. And that's in a 1997 Toyota Corola that still gets 21 miles to the gallon in the city.

So before I left the house on this particular venture, I sat down and thought, What would my wife have me do? The answer was obvious. A wee bit of okra could not justify driving 10 miles. I made a list, which included a hefty bunch of okra and two dozen eggs. The total came to $14 ($8 for the eggs, $6 for two overflowing pints of okra), plus $2 for gas. Not exactly cheap. But a whole lot more from the farmers market I do not really need, since we are growing so much in our own kitchen garden.

I wonder how many other people now are starting to make similar calculations and wondering whether the trip to their favorite farmers market for a few peaches, or a couple of onions and green beans, or that chocolate croissant, is still worth it. Or maybe they're making the trip and enlarging their purchases?

Anyway, I was happy to have the fresh okra because sister Linda and her oenophile husband Tom were coming to dinner for steaks. For an hors d'oeuvre, we had bruschetta smothered with favas and peas from my visit to One Straw Farm. Then I grilled a couple of porterhouse steaks and served the smothered okra on the side, while Tom poured a couple of different Bordeaux.

This is a very easy dish that delivers big flavor with hardly any seasoning. Slice a Vidalia onion thinly and saute it in extra-virgin olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet along with a green bell pepper cut into medium dice. When the vegetables are soft, add a quart of okra, trimmed and sliced on an angle into half-inch pieces. Then add the kernels sliced from two ears of white corn, plus the contents of a 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cover and simmer until the okra is tender. If the mix looks dry, just add a little water.

Some people complain about okra being slimy. I have never experienced this problem. Maybe they are breeding the sliminess out of okra. I heard one person recently propose that okra only gets slimy when it has been dampened with water. I find this hard to believe. But I could be totally wrong. So keep your okra away from water--until you cook it.

Planting Okra

One of our favorite vegetables is fresh okra and we have a good climate for it here in the District of Columbia. We had a fine crop of Clemson Spineless two years ago and I saved a few seed pods. They've been kicking around the house ever since. At some point it occurred to me to place them with our other seeds in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator.

In other words, I have no idea whether these seeds are still viable. I split the pods open with a paring knife and out they spilled. They had a nice, cushy home inside the pods, now they're moving to a long piece of territory behind the rhubarb plants, freshly turned and amended with compost.

Okra is a tough plant, with origins in Africa. Now we'll see if it can survive my pathetic seed saving techniques.

Dark Days: Meal 2

There is always this chicken-and-egg question when shopping for the family dinner: do we approach our provisioning with a preconceived menu in mind, or do we see what the market has to offer and make our meal around that?

I went to the Dupont Circle farmers market on Sunday knowing exactly what I wanted: a big, ripe chicken to roast on my charcoal spit. The sides for this meal were still a bit vague, but I was sure I would find something in the teeming morass of vegetable vendors.

Sure enough, at one of the vegetable stands I noticed cartons of okra, still fresh and alert. This has to be the last okra of the season. And though I think this is cheating a bit (okra hardly being "dark days" food--more like August), I thought, Why don't we just save the turnips for later?

Then I spied these big, glorious sweet potatoes and a summery menu began to take shape: fried okra and sweet potato salad. Now all I needed was that chicken, down at the Eco-Friendly food stall at the other end of the market. I made a beeline for the poultry coolers, but all I saw were breasts and miscellaneous pieces. A dark cloud of dread began to form over my well-laid plans.

"We didn't have any whole chickens to bring this week," said one of the salesmen, apparently reading my mind. "But we do have these poussins," and he directed my gaze to a display of little immature chickens--les poussins. Too small for the charcoal spit. But fine for roasting in the oven. My plans would not be completely thwarted.

So here you see my take on Meal 2, Halloween Week. Call it the last of the summer menus: Oven-roasted poussin with a sage-garlic rub, fried okra and sweet potato salad with toasted pecans and a orange-maple syrup dressing.

In other words, I will continue with whatever summer leavings the farmers market has to offer, until the November winds blow us right into fall.

Smothered Okra

I was shopping for green tomatoes at the farmers market over the weekend and though I struck out with the tomatoes I couldn't resist the okra. I bought a heaping pint of pods just on general principles--if the okra is ripe, you should eat some.

Fresh okra is a joy to behold. The pods are unlike any other vegetable with their sharp ridges and phallic pointiness. Fresh okra is unmistakably smooth and bright green (unless you are looking at the burgundy variety) and free of any blemishes. It should also be soft to the squeeze. Any hardness and the okra is likely past its prime, woody and inedible.

It was such a shock seeing the okra at Whole Foods a couple of days later. The pods were shriveled and covered with sunken brown blotches. This is okra that is probably a couple of weeks old already and not worth a plug nickel. If I'd had an extra ten minutes, I would have tracked down the produce manager just to ask why he even bothered to display this nasty old okra. It shouldn't even be offered for sale, and Whole Foods should be ashamed to be seen with it.

I cooked my farmers market okra last night, turning to an old stand-by recipe: smothered okra. I first saw this recipe in Jessica Harris' book on traditional Carribean cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish. This is one of those recipes that almost guarantees success every time. The flavors of onion, green bell pepper, okra, tomato and corn all meld perfectly together, seasoned with just salt and pepper. It always comes out tasting delicious, and I've never detected any problem of sliminess with the okra.

Just set a heavy skillet over moderate heat and saute a medium onion sliced into thin strips. Some bacon grease in the pan adds great flavor, but you can use extra-virgin olive oil if you prefer. Add a green bell pepper, season with salt to get the juices flowing out of the vegetables and cook until the onion is softened, then add the okra--a pint or more, stems trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch slices on an angle--and cook another five minutes. Now add corn kernels cut from a couple of cobs, plus a 14-ounce can or diced tomatoes (or use your own plumb tomatoes if you prefer.) Season with freshly ground black pepper, cover and cook gently another 15 minutes or so.

The okra should be soft and flavorful at this point but still have most of its original color. Serve this with your favorites rice dish and maybe some jerked pork or chicken.

Ode to Okra

Okra was a bit of a disappointment for me this year. I planted a different variety and it never reached the height of last year's crop. The pods seem to go woody before they are big enough to eat. But we do love okra. Here's a previously unpublished piece about our favorite Southern vegetable.

My guide to okra was none other than legendary food writer Craig Claiborne.

I mean his recipe in the New York Times Cookbook, of course. I’m from Chicago. What did I know from Craig Claiborne and okra?

There was only one problem. Once I tasted okra, I was hooked: I could not walk into a supermarket without checking the price of okra. Call it a passion, call it a fetish. Call it a willful disregard for normal. I became so attuned to the going rate for okra, I could give you the time based on the latest quote.

$4.99 a pound. A bit pricey. Must be January or February.

$3.59 per pound. Things are starting to thaw. March.

$2.99. I’m dusting off last year’s okra recipes. We’re in April.

$1.49. Memorial Day! Time for barbecue and a side of okra.

You’re thinking, Boy, this guy is weird. Well, not so weird as okra
itself.

This is a plant that can’t decide whether it’s a vegetable or a tree. This is the Yao Ming of the mallow family, growing to heights of 10 feet.

Some varieties of okra plants are so thick with prickly hairs, harvesters have to wear gloves to avoid getting stung. When they do start picking the fruit—a five-sided, pornographic looking green pod—the plant goes berserk and starts making pods like there’s no tomorrow.

The pods contain seeds the size of bird shot and, like something out of the movie Alien, only grow bigger—up to nearly a foot—if they’re not picked. Even more like something out of the movie Alien, when you cut into a pod it oozes a mucilaginous goo that won’t exactly burn a hole through the hull of your spacecraft, but does turn some people off. Other people think it’s just perfect for thickening soups and stews such as gumbo.

More fun okra trivia:

Okra loves hot, humid climates (but then, who doesn’t?), and just picks up steam when lesser flora are swooning in the heat. This may be why okra—originally from Africa--is so popular south of the Mason Dixon Line, as well as in the Caribbean, Brazil, India and Southeast Asia.

Okra tastes somewhere between asparagus and eggplant, even though its closest cousin is cotton. Okra also is a hibiscus and will, if left to its own devices, burst into ornamental flowers perfectly suitable for your home garden before it tries to take over with its strange pods.

The goo in gumbo is not from outer space, but rather a simple convergence of acetylated acidic polysaccharide and galacturonic acid common in mallow plants. But, you probably knew that. Trust me: It’s perfectly harmless.

Okra consistently ranks near the top of America’s least favorite vegetables, which may explain why the okra you see in supermarkets is often shriveled and covered with brown blotches. When fresh, okra is bright green, smooth and blemish free. Check your local farmer’s market or an ethnic market that appreciates good okra. Choose pods 3 to 4 inches in length. Bigger pods are tougher.

Craig Claiborne’s okra recipe called for marinating the pods in tarragon vinegar before cooking them in a skillet with red pepper flakes. Equally good is okra is stewed with corn, onions, green pepper and tomatoes. And you can hardly make an authentic gumbo without okra to thicken it (though some cooks try.)

Meanwhile, Southerners will jump through rings of fire to get fried okra. Simply trim the stem ends from the okra and cut the pods into 1/2-inch slices. Dredge these first in buttermilk, then in flour seasoned with salt. Fry the pieces in 360-degree oil, as you would French fries or onion rings. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.