What to do with that okra?

Well, you must never serve it just boiled to death in its own slime like all the southern mothers did, and while we all like it fried, we all like just about anything fried and we're over that now. So what does that leave? Well, grandmother couldn't do this, but a wonderful way to cook okra (especially the more tender pods) is to wash it and arrange it while it's still wet on a plate points in, slip the plate carefully into a plastic bag, and microwave for several minutes. It is soooo fast and soooo delicious and, since it needs only a bit of salt and pepper, so good for you. I used to do this at the office, and the Indian programmers gathered around like it was popcorn. But you have to actually like okra to begin with if you're going to eat it this way.

What we need to do with okra is present it in a way that most folks have not experienced so as to do an end run around the preconceptions. Here's a method I figured out, one that borrows shamelessly from both the Indian and the Southern cuisines.

Basically you want roughly equal volumes of okra and fresh tomato going in. The tomato cooks down into a sauce. The dish is also good when there are still discernible pieces of tomato in it, and to accomplish this, you'd want to use less tomato so there's be less juice to reduce and less cooking time. But in that case, you'd want to sauté the okra, onion, and garlic until they're almost done before you add the tomato.

Here's an outline if you're cooking the tomatoes down:

Put on a pot of water to boil... for peeling the tomatoes.

Peel and roughly chop a good-size onion, a half pound or so.

Peel and roughly chop half a head of garlic.

Wash and drain a pound of okra.

Blanch, peel, and roughly chop a pound and a half of tomatoes, making no effort to juice and seed them.

Stem and neatly chop the okra. On good days I can get much of the okra prepped before the water boils for blanching the tomatoes.

In a skillet, get a couple or three tablespoons of oil hot and start sautéing the okra.

After a couple of minutes, throw in the onion and garlic. Continue sautéing until the onion is "sweated" but not really cooked yet.

Throw in the tomato. Stir frequently over med-high heat. There will be no "sauce" at all at first, but the tomatoes will rapidly render out huge quantities of liquid.

As you are boiling away the excess liquid, the okra, onion, and garlic cook. (If you were not serving this dish as a vegetable accompaniment, you could throw in some chopped-up Niman's Provencal sausage near the end. Or better yet, you could use a couple of Bi-Rite's Hot Italian sausages, skinned and cut into bite-size pieces.)

At some point after that shown above, when the liquid has reduced to a thick sauce and the okra is tender, call it done. A dab of Patak's hot curry paste adds excitement and reminds us that we're not really sure whether the Indians or the Africans had okra first.