I’ve lived in Maine most of my life, but there are times when I feel like an Okie, particularly in matters of food. At the moment, I’m thinking of fried okra, which was a childhood favorite of mine.
If you have never seen okra, it will help to know that its nickname is Lady’s fingers. In size and shape, the edible seed pods resemble their nickname.
Frying makes it crisp. But if cooked in other ways – boiling, for example – okra can be a slimy vegetable and is often used in gumbo sorts of dishes. The reason for its sliminess is okra tends to live in hot, dry places and needs to retain moisture. If its water was in a thin, pourable form, it would evaporate easily. Instead, its water is part of a thick gluey substance called mucilage, which makes it easier to retain.
Okra is not the only plant that uses mucilage to its advantage. Almost all plants have some amount of mucilage, but certain ones – like aloe vera, cactus, and okra – take it to an extreme. If you have ever used aloe vera to treat a burn, you know its healing properties are held in a gel of smooth, thick, clear mucilage.
Let me take a moment to tell you about my childhood job, shining shoes in a nursing home. Many years later, I realized that the elderly gentlemen whose shoes I polished were the sons of Civil War veterans. And I wished that I’d been aware enough to ask them about their fathers and mothers. What a treasure those answers, those family stories, would be. But I was an oblivious kid and let pass an opportunity I didn’t know I had.
I grew up in a children’s home in Oklahoma, and we had fried okra a couple of times a month. It was delicious beyond belief. And just like the missed opportunity to interview the men whose shoes I shined, the opportunity to learn the recipe for fried okra was missed. How was I to know that as an adult I would try repeatedly to reproduce that dish.
In 2002, I made email contact with a childhood friend of mine. We were sharing memories of life in the children’s home, when I mentioned fried okra. To my joy, here is what he wrote:
“To do good okra you need a cast iron skillet with lard. Cut your okra about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick and shake in a bag that is a mixture of cornmeal and flour with one teaspoon of salt per one cup of mixture. Cook it on high heat until it is golden to dark brown. Its greeeeaaat. ”
On the Internet, you can find recipes with detailed instructions. And they will give good results. However, my friend was right. To capture the true, Southern, childhood taste (and I apologize for the modern digestive incorrectness of this), don’t fry in olive or vegetable oil, fry the okra in lard.
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