It is not okra season. I confess. I bought okra from Honduras. Bad locavore. BAD. It was just that I had a sort of craving, or maybe it was that someone else had mentioned okra to me, or maybe it was a longing for high, hot summer, the time when okra is in season. I used to grow okra (it was vegetable of the month at the CDC!) when I lived in Athens, more okra than I knew how to eat.
It's not a lovely plant actually, though its flower is really beautiful, a creamy white with a dark burgundy center and bright yellow stamens. And fresh okra, the kind you cut off the plant, carry inside, wash, cut up, sprinkle with corn meal and pan fry -- say twenty minutes max from plant to teeth -- there is nothing like this.
So homesick was I in Wisconsin that I tried to grow okra there, in the richest soil I think any okra plant has ever seen. It never worked. Okra in Georgia gets chest high, neck high -- in Wisconsin it never came to my knees. I had one blossom, and that was frail and short-lived. I missed okra. It was metonymy for the sun, and warmth, and the green, buzzing, bird-filled outdoors that the wasteland of winter in Wisconsin -- all winter, as far as I'm concerned -- denies the world.
So, yesterday, okra. And with okra: vegetarian jambalaya. Sort of. In a way. If this is jambalaya, it's the okra, the roux and the allspice that make it so. And the hot sauce, I suppose.
Here's how to make it. And thanks to Lucy Curzon for the recipe.
What you need:
1/4 cup salad oil
1/3 c white flour
a little olive oil
1 sm onion, chopped small
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 bay leaves
3 med carrots, peeled and chopped
3-5 peppers, all colors, chopped to make about 2-3 cups
2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp thyme
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 c okra (about 1/2 a pound), sliced
3 c vegetable stock
1/4 tsp allspice
hot sauce of your choice
Chop everything up and set aside. This makes up fast, so you want simply to be dumping as you go. Make some rice (go there; do this), since that's what you'll be serving this over.
In a small heavy skillet, mix the flour and salad oil. Put this on medium heat and stir frequently. This is your roux, which will complicate the taste of the jambalaya (Hank. Sigh.) and thickens it, too.
In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium high heat and saute the onions, garlic, bay and up to about a TBSP of either red pepper flakes or jalapeno paste. When the onions have softened and become transparent (this should take a minute or two), add the carrots, peppers, basil, and thyme. Stirring every once and a while so the vegetables don't burn, cook for 5 minutes.
Add tomatoes, okra, stock, and allspice. Stir to combine.
Cover and cook for twenty minutes.
Meanwhile, turn the heat up on the roux and stir constantly. It should begin to turn very dark brown, sort of burned-looking. Keep it moving in the pan. You want it about the color of nicely tanned leather and to smell almost nutty. When you've achieved this, turn the heat off and go do something until the vegetables are cooked.
After twenty minutes, check that the carrots are soft enough (run a fork into the largest piece you can find). If they are, scrape the roux into the vegetables, stirring the vegetables constantly so they don't cook the flour into dumplings. If this happens, it's not a big deal: you just have something less jambalaya than -- I don't know -- quasi-Caribbean vegetable and dumpling stew. Still edible. Still actually pretty tasty (yes, I've done this; that's how I know).
Drape this over some rice, in bowls. Dump on the hot sauce of your choice (classic is Tabasco, but we're real fond of Cholula ourselves). Eat.
There you go.
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