The Quest For Perfect Okra (The Never Ending Saga)

Most days when I take my usual route to work, I pass a house which is adjacent to lot which contains a fairly large garden. A garden is so large in fact, that only a retired gentleman would attempt such an undertaking.

The gardener/farmer often has a sign in his yard indicating what veggies he has for sale. Last week okra was added to the list of tomatoes, squash, and peas. As I drove past Friday morning I resolved by swing back by on my way home to acquire some okra.

Friday evening I did stop by. Unfortunately no okra was available. I was informed by the gardener that he cut the okra every morning and that it went pretty fast. I thanked the gardener for his time and promised to return soon, except much earlier in the day. Today I stopped in again. This time at 6:50 AM. The gardener was about half way down one of many rows of okra when he spotted me. He returned to the driveway with a 5 gallon bucket full. He remembered me from Friday and asked if I had returned for some okra. I purchased two pounds which was barely a dent in his bucket. I also bought a greenish-red tomato.

This evening I once again attempted to fry me a mess of okra. And make some corn bread. The cornbread turned out bad. Really bad. The okra was good, but it could have used a little salt. (This weekend we discovered that we were out of salt which probably isn't a bad thing.)

I decided last time I fried of a batch that I needed to use less oil, less heat, and less meal. And so I did. For the two pounds of okra I used 3 heaping tablespoons of cornmeal (mix). This turned out to be just about right. Basically I put the okra in a bowl, poured the meal of the top and agitated it until all the okra was evenly coated. There was no excess meal remaining in the bottom of the bowl.

As for the oil, I put just enough in the skillet to cover the bottom. Barely. I had previously decided that frying okra was not really about frying okra, but rather about cooking out the moisture. With this reasoning, perhaps false reasoning, I decided that the cooking process should be more similar to sauteing.

Wikipedia defines sauteing as a method of cooking food that uses a small amount of oil (or fat) in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. It is my opinion that high heat is not necessary, but that medium heat should suffice. This may be flawed thinking. My reasoning was that turning up the temp would only create a mess as the oil would splatter everywhere. But wait, I didn't have much oil in the pan so perhaps this wouldn't be a problem. Regardless, I stuck with the medium heat.

The okra took quite a while to cook. Perhaps because the heat was too low. Perhaps because I had too much in the skillet. Perhaps both. Next time I will attempt to reconcile this situation.

One other thing to note. I think I 'stirred' the okra to often. This is my opinion because more seeds seemed to be liberated from the pods than I had noticed in the past.

The final result I would call a success. It looked right. It was not burnt. It was not oily. It was not to mealy. It could have used a little salt though. And perhaps some fresh corn meal.

Ssh! Don't tell, I cut up a green tomato and a three pieces of pickled okra and added then to the batch. A little something something.

To be continued.