A Yankee Fries Up Some Lady's Fingers: Crispy Okra with Tomatoes and Pesto

No matter what you want to call the edible green pods - okra, Abelmoschus esculentus Moench, lady's fingers, kingombo or bhindi - one thing most Americans agree on is that white Northerners have no idea what to do with the stuff. A staple of southern cooking and soul food, as well as South American, East Asian and African cuisine, this flowering member of the mallow family (making it a relative to cotton, durian fruits, kola nuts and cacao) hails from Africa, and indeed it is from the Bantu word for okra - kingombo - that our culinary term "gumbo" derives (while Americans tend to refer to the stew made with okra as a gumbo, other cultures simply use the phrase in reference to the pods themselves).

One rarely sees okra above the Mason-Dixon line, and this is a shame, for its uses are many. Japanese cooks use it for tempura. Haitians mix it up with maize or rice. In Pakistan, okra is served pickled or in sambar. Mediterranean cooks from Yemen to Israel stir it into meat-based stews, the Vietnamese add it to canh chua, Gujarat cuisine stir fries the pods in sugar, and Caribbean callaloo uses okra as one of its defining ingredients. In the American south, of course, okra most commonly shows up in gumbo, but it is also gloriously deep-fried.

Having come into a nice bag of fresh okra from our latest CSA farm box (we decided to swap out a head of lettuce for the newly-arrived green pods), I wanted to attempt a variation on the standard deep-fried approach I'd seen multiple recipes for. I tend to avoid deep-fried food in general, and never try to create it at home, believing quite strongly that one shouldn't attempt deep-frying unless one actually has commercial-sized equipment and copious amounts of oil. Nothing is more lame than someone's limp, greasy, pale home-made french fries.

But I wanted our okra to come out a little crispy, partly because of the satisfaction of the tempura-like crunch, and partly due to the very nature of okra itself. Okra pods are infused with mucilage, full of healthy fiber but thick and unpleasant to many people. During the cooking process, okra pods release this slimy goo, much in the same way that canned nopales offers up sticky strands of gummy liquid. I'm not the biggest fan, and that comes as little surprise, seeing how I'm not the biggest fan of what is one of the few food products actually created from mucilagonous extract - marshmallows (and as noted above, okra is a member of the mallow family - kinda cool, huh?). There are many ways around the okra goo, such as only using young, fresh pods, cooking the okra with citrus or other acidic ingredients, or simply dousing them in lemon juice (the gumbo preparation solves the sticky problem by slicing the okra thinly and cooking long enough for the mucilage to dissolve). Deep-frying also bypasses the goo, and I decided to adapt a recipe first used by famed chef Jeremiah Tower and adapted by his proteges at the Ogunquit, Maine restaurant The Arrows.

I was especially drawn to this method of preparing crispy okra because it called for a nice selection of heirloom tomatoes, which have reached their peak just outside our kitchen door. The recipe also required pesto, of which we had a few frozen containers Jane had whipped up a month ago. I've seen other variations on this recipe that call for bacon or crispy ham, but we decided the meat wasn't necessary for the meal.

I sauteed the okra a little longer than necessary, perhaps, but we enjoyed the resulting crisp-almost-burnt crunch.

It was awesome. I picked up another bag of okra at yesterday's farmer's market for a repeat performance. That doesn't happen very often around here.

Crispy Okra With Tomatoes and Pesto

5 large tomatoes, plus 6-7 cherry tomatoes, sliced
1 pound fresh okra, cut into rounds
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons of pesto (plenty of pesto recipes out there - here are some - the secret is to make in bulk and freeze)
salt
pepper
fresh basil

1) Arrange the sliced tomatoes on plates or in bowls, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2) Pour cornmeal into a large bowl and add okra. Toss until coated.

3) Heat olive oil in saucepan over medium heat, and add okra. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Saute slowly, stirring occasionally, until okra takes on golden brown color (5-7 minutes).

4) Divide okra over the tomatoes, drizzle with pesto. Garnish with strips of fresh basil, and serve immediately.