Recipe: Okra Casserole I

Eat your veggies!

OKRA CREOLE I

Serves 4

1 C okra, sliced, boiled in a small amount of salted water for 10 minutes, drained

1 medium onion, chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

2 Tbsp salad oil

3 fresh tomatoes, quartered OR 1 C canned tomatoes

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

Dash Tabasco (or more, to taste)

Brown onion and pepper in oil, add tomatoes, and cook 5 minutes. Add drained okra, sugar, flour, salt, pepper, and Tabasco, and cook 5 minutes longer.

Recipe: Okra Coo-Coo

I know what you're thinking.

I admit, it doesn't look like much. But in fact, it was really quite good-- and very different for an okra dish! So if you don't like okra, give this a try.

“An unusual cooked okra side dish that comes from Barbados. It is served mainly with fried or steamed flying fish for which the island is noted. The Bajans use a coo-coo stick to remove the lumps from the cornmeal, but my wooden kitchen spoon proved very satisfactory. Coo-coo can be made with breadfruit or with canned tomatoes.”—Winifred Green Cheney, The Southern Hospitality Cookbook (1976)

OKRA COO-COO

Makes 4 servings

6 tender okra pods, washed and sliced

1 ½ C water

1 tsp salt

½ C dry white cornmeal

2 Tbsp butter

½ tsp Tabasco

Bring water to a boil, add salt and okra, and cook about 15 minutes or until tender. “A fork should go in easily.” Drain okra in colander and reserve cooking liquid. Return okra to saucepan with 4 Tbsp cooking liquid, stir in cornmeal with coo-coo stick or wooden kitchen spoon, pressing against sides of saucepan to remove any lumps, gradually remaining reserved cooking liquid, butter, and Tabasco, and cook until mixture is thick and smooth.

Recipe: Fritter Fried Okra

Veggie night!

FRITTER FRIED OKRA

Serves 6-8

1 C flour

3 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 eggs, well beaten

1/3 C milk

5 C okra, sliced thin

Deep hot fat

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Combine eggs and milk, and stir into dry ingredients until smooth. Stir in okra, spoon into deep hot fat, and fry.

Recipe: Hot Pickled Okra

Thanks to this recipe and a couple of others, we are finally making our way through the hot pepper pods I grew and dried about five years ago!

This recipe is easily made smaller if you don't have six pounds of okra. It's so easy, you can do the math in your head!

HOT PICKLED OKRA

Makes 10 pints

6 lbs young okra, washed

1 ½ quarts white vinegar

1 ½ quarts water

½ C salt (canning or pickling preferred)

10-20 hot pepper pods

10 garlic cloves, halved

Boil white vinegar, water, and salt for 10 minutes. Pack okra into hot pint jars with 1 pepper pod and 1 clove garlic in each jar. Pour boiling liquid over okra, seal jars, and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Recipe: Dilled Okra

Green, white and red okra!

Recipe below.

Recipe: Cajun Stewed Okra

From Justin Wilson; Why it's called stewed is a good question

CAJUN STEWED OKRA

Okra, sliced

Eggs, beaten, equal in volume to amount of okra

Shredded cheeses (use your imagination)

Heat oven to 350^o. Put okra in a greased casserole dish and pour beaten eggs over. Top with cheeses to cover. Bake until set and cheese has melted.

~~

I'd have called it Oven Baked Okra Omelet.

We have so much okra. Tomorrow we freeze okra.

Inside the Life of an Okra

'Corn Horn'

'Aunt Hattie's Red'

There is nothing-- and I do mean nothing-- like Mr. Big Food's okra fritters. Lord. I'll bet you one United States Dollar that there will be fried catfish night featuring okra fritters real soon!

Oh! Maybe I will suggest that for one of our Independence Day Celebrations suppers. There's nothing-- and I do mean nothing-- like firing up both barrels of the turkey fryer when it's 100 degrees outside.

SALE!

I can recommend the muskmelon, sweet potato pumpkin, and watermelon.

New Hope Seed Company-- for whom I really do not work!-- is having a seed sale.

May I recommend New Hope Seed Company?

"We specialize in open-pollinated and heirloom vegetable seed varieties that are rare and not readily commercially available."

Now that the Christmas Season is over, it's time to move into Almost Summer (which is followed by Summer, and Still Summer). You know what that means? Seeds! New Hope Seed Company is the first stop I'll make after I do an inventory of what I have that's still viable. 

What I like about New Hope Seed Company (in no particular order & no, I don't work for New Hope):

-- Canteloupe/Muskmelon. Without a doubt the melon varieties available at New Hope are the best I've ever had. Mind you, there are only six varieties but once you found perfection why go elsewhere? Mr. Big Food is a very big fan of melon and both he and I agree that there's no contest; Old Tennessee Muskmelon is in a class by itself. 

Old Tennessee Muskmelon sherbet

-- Customer Service. This follows from the melons. There had been a failure of our favorite melon, and seeds were not available for 2011. When I placed my order, I noted in the comments section that I was disappointed. When my order arrived, it contained a packet of those seeds with a hand written note. 

[more what I like plus what you might not like below the fold]

Seed sale

I got an email from New Hope Seed Company. They are having a sale!

I will order Aunt Hatie's red okra, whippoorwill blackeyes (cowpeas = blackeyed peas), and the hardshell melon seeds. I'll also pre-order one of those sweet potatoes.

The red okra is delicious and beautiful. Okra is related to hollyhock, rose of Sharon, and hibiscus. The flowers are gorgeous. The plant gets about 3-4' or more tall. You could plant okra in the back of a flower bed!

Fresh blackeyes are so good. Once established, the plants take care of themselves.

We had that hardshell melon this year. It was very good, although to be honest, I like this French melon better. But the hardshell melon is more resistant to critters.

Last year was the first I'd grown sweet potatoes. I was pretty ignorant about them then. I now know that once you have a crop, you no longer need to buy slips. This year, I wasn't paying attention and both of the varieties I planted, Nancy Hall and O'Henry, were white potatoes. Very tasty but not traditional. So I'll get some orange for next year. Sweet potatoes are so easy it grow.

A word about the tobacco: Cool. I grew tobacco once. I was ticked off that the busybodies in the fairly good sized sort of mid-Western city in which we lived had decided in their infinite wisdom to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants. I knew the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street belonged to the city (although I never saw anyone from the city mowing it). So I planted tobacco on city property. Take that! 

Tobacco is another plant that is beautiful as a plant, especially if you let it go to seed.