Forget the slime and Southern stereotypes, there’s more to okra than Ghostbusters references and Paula Deen. —Stefanie Gans
Cook
Dr. Peter Venkman’s World
“When you hear okra, for me, you immediately think Southern,” says Brys Stephens. For others, though, they think slime. In his debut cookbook, “The New Southern Table,” the Alabama native dedicates his first chapter to the slender green vegetable and shows off okra in worldly preparations: with tomatoes and feta (Greek), cumin and chickpeas (Indian) and shoyu and wasabi (Japanese).
“It’s quirky and misunderstood,” says Stephens, and “there’s the slime thing that people worry about.” To avoid okra’s goo, Stephens recommends buying small pods, using dry, hot cooking methods for a short time (like roasting or grilling), and soaking it in a salt-vinegar solution to maintain a firm texture.
Long and slow recipes, like gumbo, take advantage of okra’s inner mucilage. By adding thinly sliced okra at the beginning of the recipe and “cooking it ‘til it’s literally blasted apart,” says Stephens, the okra will help thicken the stew just as a roux would. Just don’t cook it slow and wet to a pale green, says Stephens: it’ll “taste like canned asparagus.”
Grind
Peppered-up classic
It takes seven different types of peppercorns to create the seasoning for Johnny Ray’s fried okra. At his almost year-old Herndon restaurant, Johnny Ray’s Sultry Soul Food, Ray grinds each type of peppercorn to a specific consistency, from extra fine to extra coarse. “I love everything that’s peppery,” says Ray, who bases his cornmeal-battered fried okra on his grandmother’s recipe. “I have to remind myself that not everyone loves pepper as much as I do.”
Fry
Like candy
Tim Ma’s Thai okra started on Maple Ave Restaurant’s menu when it opened four years ago. But okra wasn’t Ma’s first attempt at a fried snack. He tried shredded cabbage, but the strands kept slipping through the fry basket. It was, he says, “the biggest fail.” So Ma, and his wife and co-owner Joey Hernandez, brainstormed about what else would caramelize well. They experimented with okra because it turns very sweet—right before it reveals itself as very bitter—when fried. What makes this cult favorite dish something Ma says, “he can’t take off the menu,” is its sugary coating cut with limes, Thai chilies and fish sauce. The dressing is a riff on the sauce served with crispy spring rolls at Ma’s favorite (mostly because of proximity) Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Thang Long. The okra tastes candy-like and, says Ma, “it’s the most surprising dish” at his Vienna restaurant.
(July 2014)
