Beautiful, flavorful, fabulous. . .Okra!?!

First let me say that even if okra were not edible, I would grow it for its sheer beauty.

Look at these okra flowers in bloom. Please! Okra flowers are the most beautiful blooms in my garden right now, and despite all kinds of weather (including seemingly unending rain for the past ten days) and all manner of insects multiplying like crazy in the garden, the okra flowers are still gorgeous.

We grew two varieties of okra this year, Burgundy (left) and Fife Creek (below).

I can't resist posting a few more photos:

I can't get enough of the okra flowers.

Now, on to the eating of okra. As a garden crop, okra is virtually pest-free here in western North Carolina, and incredibly sturdy and prolific. Despite these virtues, okra is not universally popular as a food. And that is putting it mildly.

My mom says that from an informal survey that she conducted at her church, she has concluded that people have very strong feelings about okra. You might even say that okra is a polarizing force. "People either love it or hate it," she says, "and a lot of people really hate it."

I know I have the zeal of a cult member about this, being one of the people in the "love" camp, but I really feel that much of the hate is, like a lot of hating in general, just a matter of misunderstanding. In the specific case of okra, I just don't think people have had it "cooked right."

Now you can batter and fry almost anything and make it taste good. But there is a very simple way of preparing okra that brings out its excellent flavor and makes this fabulous summer vegetable hard to resist, in my highly biased opinion. At a recent dinner party, I dared even those who thought they were okra-haters to try the okra I was serving and still hate okra. All but one of the previous haters said they actually liked the okra I served, and the lone holdout said that he would not say he had hated this okra, but rather had "just sort of not liked it." So at least if we cannot de-polarize the health care debate, we are making progress on the okra debate.

So here is the secret:

Don't slice it and saute it, or make the typical tomato-based gumboish dish (although for okra lovers, those are other fine ways to enjoy it). Just wash it, leave it whole, drizzle it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, sprinkle on some salt and grind on some pepper, and bake the okra.

I like to bake it for about 30 minutes with quartered onions, whole heads of garlic, whole Italian frying peppers, and sliced summer squash, all fresh from the garden and drizzled/sprinkled with the aforementioned seasonings.

I first had okra prepared this way earlier this summer at my friend Shane's house. She had roasted a big batch of whole okra after marinating it in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and kept it cold in the fridge for a snack. I know, cold, whole okra sounds disgusting. But it was so good I couldn't stop eating it. This was the first way I had ever experienced the delight of eating whole okra seeds -- baked or roasted, the seeds are plump, soft, little morsels that pop in your mouth -- mmm!

I've been making okra this way several times a week since that okra-licious experience at Shane's. Okra is still busting out in our garden like mad, so we just keep eating it, and I can't bring myself to cook it any other way anymore. Fresh from the oven it's mouth-watering, and as a snack the next day from the fridge, it's almost as good.

Haters: I dare you to try it and not change your minds. OK, I know, diversity is our strength, but maybe give it a whirl just once?

More on okra at Foodista:

In Praise of Okra

I've been loving the little Burgundy Okra seedlings in the hoophouse since they first sprouted, their dark green leaves looking all wine-stained with red. Now their first true leaves have emerged, a springey yellow-green color that looks amazing with the deep red stems.  

Okra are truly beautiful plants, members of the hibiscus family, and one of my favorite summer garden plants.  I think okra would be worth planting just for the ornamental value even if they didn't bear food. Those tropical leaves! Those voluptuous flowers! That towering height!  

As I've been going through plant orders for our Big Plant Sale coming up May 9, I've noticed very few requests for okra.  The relative lack of interest in okra starts inspired me to post some okra photos from our garden last summer, to draw attention to the beautiful and underappreciated vegetable.  

These pictures really stoke my anticipation of summer gardening...at this time of year when tiny seedlings are dwarfed by big, empty beds, its nice to remember that in a few months, the garden will be overflowing with wild, abundant plant life.  

So here's to anticipation of summer, and long live okra!

More on brine pickling

Jars of recently brined pickles: mixed vegetables on the left and summer squash on the right.

Earlier this summer, I blogged about one of my favorite old-fashioned, probiotic ways to preserve vegetables -- pickling them in salt water. (See the original post, Coming Home to Abundance for brine-pickling instructions, references, and background).

Brine pickling has been such an ongoing, everyday part of life at our house over the past few months of heavy harvest that I wanted to write a little bit more about it, with specific comments on various vegetables for brining.

This summer, I've brine-pickled cucumbers, squash, okra, onions, garlic, radishes, beets, carrots, and cauliflower, all with good results. Fresh dill, basil, and parsley all pickle well, too, and add great flavor to brine pickles. I have a crock going now of baby squash, the last of the summer carrots, and okra with dill flowers. I'm sure I've brined other things in summers past, but I don't remember them all!

I do remember that I tried fingerling eggplants once with disastrous results (mushy and moldy), so I don't recommend brining eggplant. Other things I DON'T recommend brining include: ripe tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and lettuce. I've known friends to brine watermelon rinds (very delicious) and green tomatoes successfully, too.

I've found that squash and cucumbers do great pickled whole and then de-brined (soaked in cold water), sliced, and stored in a 4-to-1 water/vinegar solution. They'll last almost indefinitely in the fridge that way.

You can store the pickles in the original brining liquid, which is cloudy and full of beneficial bacteria, but it's generally a bit salty for my taste. I like to pour it off and save it to use for other things, including just pouring a shot of it into sauerkraut or pickles when packing into jars for storage.

Okra is really tasty brined whole and either sliced and packed or just packed as whole pods (they look cool that way). This is an outstanding way to keep up with the okra overload when your okra plants are producing faster than you can possibly come up with clever ways to disguise okra for fresh consumption.

Small carrots are great brined whole, and are a surprisingly yummy snack - salty, crunchy, and crisp.

Onions do better quartered than whole, unless they're pretty small. Pearl-sized pickled onions are GREAT.

An easy way to get started with brine pickling is to fill a crock or big jar with all the brine-able veggies that you have lying around needing to be used. Make sure they're washed and prepped as described in my earlier post and then pour a strong brine solution over them (1/2 cup salt to 1 quart water). Press down (I use a plate weighted with a full jar on top), make sure they're submerged, cover, and wait. In warm weather, the pickles will be salty, sour, and pickled in as little as 10 days. It really is like magic!

September Garden Pictures...

Polyculture in the keyhole bed (dill, strawflowers, okra, eggplant, marigolds, peppers, amaranth, black beans, and sunflowers)





































































Beans growing up various sunflower stalks and drying on the vine ~ these will be dry black beans for eating all winter. Cucuzzi edible gourds are mixed in, too, and okra and butternut squash...














































Zinnias, nasturtiums, milkweed, and beans...chicory in the background.











baby okra!

ironweed & sunflowers in the background

Coming Home to Abundance

After a week of air and car travel and some wonderful time in Colorado, I returned to an avalanche of vegetables.

I felt like kissing the ground when my plane landed in Asheville after 12 hours of travel -- so grateful to come back to these lush, soft mountains after the rocky and dramatic landscape of the west.

In the garden, everything is exploding in flower and fruit. Zinnias, nasturtiums, bee balm, fennel, calendula, poppies, strawflowers, and sunflowers are in full bloom. Japanese Long Cucumbers are coming in hot and heavy, bi-color zephyr squash is everywhere you look, greens are still kicking, broccoli is producing a second crop, peppers are starting to come in, and tomatoes are just a few days away from ripe.

Above: Japanese Long Cucumber plants jumping the fence....

At left: Some of the food we brought in from the garden this morning...

This morning's harvest included cucumbers, cauliflower, beets, onions, purple jalepenos, cherry tomatoes, squash, edible gourds, okra, dill, and basil. Last night we feasted on food from the garden - a perfect welcome home.

Christopher reminded me of when I used to brine vegetables, making a mixed crock of pickled veggies, when we lived in town. Since we had so many cukes and squash today, along with plenty of other brine-able veggies, I started a crock this afternoon.

Pickling in salt water, or brine, is an ancient and easy way to preserve vegetables for later use. No electricity or heat is required, and you end up with delicious sour and salty pickled veggies that last for months.

For more information on brine pickling, see Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation or Marilyn Kluger's Preserving Summer's Bounty.

Here's a summary of how brining works from Kluger: "Produce that has been properly cured in a 10 percent brine will keep almost indefinitely. The brine solution is strong enough to kill most of the bacteriathat are present when the vegetables are put into the salt water. Those that survive salt are destroyed in due time by the lactic acid that is produced by the bacteria themselves when they decompose the sugar drawn out of the cucumbers by the salt, through the process of fermentation. The lactic acid formed is responsible for much of the desirable flavor of fermented pickles."

A few years ago, when I was first getting way into brining vegetables in the summer for winter sour pickles, an old family friend told me that at her grandmother's house when she was a little girl, it was a special treat to get to go out behind the house to the underground root cellar and pull out pickled baby corn from a big crock to eat as a snack. She remembered the salty, sour taste of pickled corn as an old mountain tradition, one that had been lost in her family when root cellars and crocks were replaced by refrigeration and tupperware.

Packing cucumbers, squash, and okra into a crock today, I felt deeply connected to the long chain of food tradition that mostly women have stewarded for so many generations, handing down recipes, swapping techniques, and working together in families and communities to process and preserve food.

Here's a basic recipe for the mixed vegetable brine pickle I made today. I used the veggies that we happened to have in the garden today; you can use whatever is fresh and available.

Ingredients and Equipment:

• Fresh vegetables and herbs: okra, squash, cucumbers, peppers, peeled garlic, small onions, cauliflower, basil, and dill
• Sea salt and black peppercorns
• Water
• A large ceramic crock or (if you don't have a crock) a large wide-mouthed glass jar such as a cookie or apothecary jar (not a mason jar). You need a jar or crock with a mouth wide enough for a plate to fit inside. I used a 5 gallon ceramic crock, one of the best kitchen investments I've ever made, bought a few years ago from Lehman's.
• A plate that fits inside the crock and something to weigh it down. An old-time method is to use a rock; I use a mason jar filled with water (with the lid on to prevent spills).
  

Directions:

1. Wash all of your vegetables and herbs thoroughly, and make sure the blossom-ends are scrubbed or cut off. You can cut up anything that's too large and unwieldy for the crock, and leave everything else whole. Put all of the veggies in the crock, and add pepper, dill, basil, and anything else you want to throw in for flavor.
2. Dissolve salt in water at the ratio of 1 cup per 2 quarts of water.
3. Pour the salt water over the vegetables until they're covered. You might have to keep making more brine until you have enough to completely cover the veggies. I used about 5 quarts of brine.
   
4. Sit the plate inside the crock so that no air is trapped underneath it, and weigh it down with something heavy and press down.
   
5. All of the veggies should be well underwater. If they are not, keep adding brine mixed at the same proportion until they are completely submerged.
   
6. Throw on a little extra salt on top for good measure.
7. Cover with a clean, lightweight cloth (I use a floursack dishtowel).
   
8. Let the crock sit for 3-6 weeks, skimming off any scum that forms.

Brined vegetables can keep for a long time in the crock -- remember my friend's grandmother's pickled corn was stored, already pickled, in the crock in a cool place. Or, when the pickles reach your desired point of flavor, you can jar them up and refrigerate them, and they'll keep for a long time there, too. You can de-salt them before serving if you want by rinsing.

Some people desalt and process brined vegetables--Preserving Summer's Bounty has lots of recipes for pickle preparations using brined vegetables as an ingredient. I avoid heat-processing brined vegetables so that the beneficial bacteria that is created in the fermentation process is preserved.

At left: the beginning of today's mixed vegetable crock...

Okra!

Photo by Debi Cates

Over the weekend, we planted the last of our hot-weather starts, including 3 varieties of okra.

One heirloom variety that we planted, Fife Creek Cowhorn is said to have been in the Fife family since around 1900 and believed to have came to them from a Muskogee (Creek) Indian woman who stayed with them in Mississippi.

There is plenty of discussion online about the history of okra, and how it might have come to the US, but it seems clear that it is an African native that was brought here by slaves. (Reccomended reading: 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From by William Woys Weaver.) In fact, since there is ample historical evidence (including oral family histories of people of color in the US) to suggest that escaped slaves were integrated into Native American/First Nation communities, it's easy to imagine that the Fife Creek okra we're growing came into the hands of the Muskogee/Creek woman (who may have also had African heritage) directly from people of African descent.

Okra was a staple of many African cultures before the slave trade.

Imagine African people, ambushed, kidnapped, forcibly taken from their homes into the slave trade, somehow managing to carry seeds with them. Were the seeds secreted away in a pocket or pouch? Were they passed from one pair of hands to another as people grew sick and died on the grueling "Middle Passage" journey across the Atlantic on slave ships? Did different people carry different varieties of okra seeds with them?

Of course imagining how okra came to us makes me think: what would people of our culture take with them if, in an instant, we could grab a few most-important things from our homes to carry on a long, forced journey with an unknown end? What do we value in the way that kidnapped slaves valued seeds?

What the Cherokee people took, what the Africans soon to be slaves took, what the indigenous peoples pressed into slavery and moved from one part of the Americas to another took with them were seeds. The food we eat is a gift from those who placed such a high value on seeds, on food, on the continuity of life that they carried seeds through circumstances most of us cannot even imagine.

In many villages where slaves were captured, the women and girls planted the seeds, brought water from the river for the young plants, worked the soil, and harvested the food. The adas, eldest sisters, were the keepers of the seeds and the settlers of disputes. Last night, watering the small okra plants in our garden, I said thank you to the adas.

Okra












West African women