If the South had a mascot, it would be okra. You love, hate or have an unfounded fear of okra — and the same is true of the South.
There’s no vegetable more polarizing than this poor little pod. And it’s only one part of okra that tends to bother people: the slimy seeds. Now I seek okra out. I want to cook with it. I want to change people’s minds about it. I’m not going to print myself an “I Love Okra” T-shirt or name my next child after it, but I understand
and respect it just as much as I do every other vegetable.
These fritters from my cookbook “Deep Run Roots” capitalize on okra’s slime like nothing else. They’re sort of a cross between a scallion pancake and fried okra, and their pillowy texture and vegetal flavor, coupled with the sweet pop of corn, is pleasing and addictive.
Choose large mature pods, and use only their fat midsections. The swollen seeds hiding in there will actually do a lot to hold the fritter batter together. I like to eat these fritters right out of the frying pan over stewed tomatoes, but they’re also nice at room temperature as a scoop for hummus.
Serves 4
1 cup okra, caps and tips removed, midsections minced
½ cup fresh corn, cut off the cob
¼ cup squash or zucchini, grated on a box grater or in a food processor
3 tablespoons minced scallion
1 teaspoon salt, divided
2 tablespoons cornmeal
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 egg
¼ teaspoon hot sauce
¼ to ⅓ cup vegetable oil
Preheat your oven to 200°F. In a medium bowl, stir together the minced okra, corn, squash, scallion, and ½ teaspoon of the salt. Let that sit for about 5 minutes. The salt will leach out the moisture in the squash. That moisture will activate the slime in the okra and bring the veggies together in kind of a gooey-looking mass.
Stir in the cornmeal and flour to incorporate. Whisk together the buttermilk, egg and hot sauce, and stir it into the dry, slimy mass. Mix this up a few times and let it sit at least 3 minutes and up to 1 hour before you get ready to cook the fritters.
In a 10- to 12-inch skillet or cast-iron pan, add the oil over medium heat. If you want larger fritters, spoon about 2 tablespoons of the batter into the preheated oil and press down on each dollop to flatten it slightly. The fritters should be about ¼ inch thick. If you’d like smaller fritters, start with 1 tablespoon of batter.
Carefully continue dropping dollops of batter into the hot oil, making sure the fritters don’t touch. Cook the fritters over medium heat on each side till they are chestnut-colored in some spots and golden in others. Transfer the fritters to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain and season them while hot with the remaining salt. Keep them warm in your oven while you fry the next batch.
Serve warm.
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Vivian Howard is the chef and owner of the acclaimed Chef and the Farmer restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina. The first woman since Julia Child to win a Peabody Award for a cooking program, she co-created and stars in the PBS series “A Chef’s Life.”
Excerpted from “Deep Run Roots” by Vivian Howard. Copyright (copyright) 2016 by Vivian Howard. Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.
