2022-09-15T07:00:00Z
Does anyone cook a lot with Okra? I’ve been getting so much and usually make a tomato/miso dish with it or pickle it but am looking for more variety while still keeping it simple.
One of my favorites is this wonderful creamy coconut curry pumpkin soup from this website: Coconut Curry Pumpkin Soup It is easy to make and tastes great even when omitting the curry powder or garam masala.
Ray W
Cooking good stuff with veggies is the hardest part of the life, I get so strung out on garden stuff I hardly have time for any fancy cooking. Veggie soup based on this recipy the SHOCKING SECRET to great veggie soup (!!!) - YouTube is a go to for me, and beans of cabbage fried with bacon.
For okra, which I didn’t plant this year, I like to just get a pan how with oil, drom in whole uncut okra, and sizzle sizzle until its brown ridged. Then have it as a quick snack.
Sunny shelf dried tomaters is good too.
Mark R
I can relate to that video too. In fact I made some tomato soup a few nights ago, here’s my recipe, it’s a bit more complicated but not too much.
Get some nice meaty tomatoes, squish em up just a little bit, cut off the end and squeeze out the seeds (save the seeds), slop on a bit of olive oil and put em in the oven to roast a while.
Chop up some carrots, celery, fresh green pepper and a big mild onion and throw em in a kittle with a little butter, when they soften up and maybe brown just a tad, put in some water and boil the crap out of em.
Retrieve the tomatoes from oven, throw em in the pot and boil the heck out of it.
Let it all cool a bit and get out your potato masher and smash it all up real good or use one of those blendy stick things if ya got one.
Let it all cool a bit more and add some cream and a clove or two of smashed up garlic and heat it all back up good but don’t boil it anymore. Throw in a bit of thyme, marjoram or whatever a ya want, or if you insist some basil. Lastly a bit of sweet wine if ya want. Also salt and pepper to taste.
Let it cool good and put it in the fridge till the next day. Warm it back up and serve with black pepper and olive oil on toast.
Potato soup is very similar except no tomatoes and here the outside of the potato, with the peel is thrown in with the other things to be sauteed, boiled and smashed. About 1/2 of the potato is used here.
The inside 1/2 of the potatoes is cubed up, I like mine kind of on the small side and put in to cook till tender before adding the garlic and cream.
The thyme is NOT optional here, don’t even think about nor is a splash or two of a good wine, I prefer dry red in this case.
Lowell M
Wow that sounds good! I like the idea of roasting the tomatoes to develop more complex flavor. It reminds me a bit of a tomato gratin I have made in the past.
Heidi A
I too highly suggest roasting tomatoes (and tomatillos). This year I roasted tomatoes, red peppers and garlic in the same pan until slightly browned, cooled and then blended it all up. That’s my sauce waiting in the freezer in two cup portions (no need for salt or sugar or oil). I made a short-cut spicy version for “chile” sauce by adding chiles. Also, I love doing soups/stews with roasted tomatillos for the base instead of tomatoes – they are so sweet and complex when roasted. I just did a left-over turkey stew that way – yum!
And there’s chutney! I don’t even do a recipe anymore. Tomatoes, ripe or green, dried fruit of choice (figs, prunes, cranberries), plus any combination of the following: a little bit of apple cider vinegar and/or molasses or maple syrup, chiles, apples, citrus zest and juice, onions, garlic, ginger, ground spices (or whole spices in a spice bag) like cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, coriander, fennel, etc. Cook it all in slow cooker and then freeze in half-pint or pint jars. It’s great on everything – roasted veggies, meats, tacos, toast, oatmeal, added to stews. And I don’t have to figure out the dern jell point like with jellies!
Lowell M
Haha that video is funny and relatable. I used to work in a restaurant that was a bit like this, blanching the tomatoes, slow cooking the onions until caramel perfection. Some of the stuff there was great but it did take 6+ hrs to do.
I’ll try that with the okra. Thanks!
Debbie A
My husband is Greek, and when we visit his family in Greece, his sisters sometimes cook a dish of baby okra in tomato sauce. This recipe is pretty similar to how they cook it:
They buy okra that are not more than 2" long. Also, when they trim the okra, they don’t cut off the top, exposing the seeds. They leave the pod intact, just thinly trimming the skin of the top, leaving a little cone. Yes, very labor intensive and I’m not sure it’s necessary. But it is delicious served with a healthy chunk of feta cheese and fresh, crusty bread!
Lowell M
That’s interesting they soak the okra in vinegar. I’ll have to try this but I’ll probably skip on trimming the skin. That does sound very labor intensive. Thank you for sharing!
Ray S
Kale and winter squash: fry off some onions in the fat of your choice, throw in some cubed squash, garlic, turmeric, hot pepper flakes and salt and cook until squash has some brown edges (a watery squash won’t work well here, too mushy). Add kale (and/or other leafy greens) and when wilted crumble over some feta cheese or if non-dairy add salt and squeeze over some lemon juice. Enjoy!
Julia D
I’m working on expanding my dried corn recipes. Have been making tacos, and tonight making hominy for pozole. Any other recipe ideas for corn? besides corn bread and polenta, I don’t yet have a good way of grinding dry corn.
Lowell M
This is actually something I’ve had trouble with too. I love making hominy but it can be intensive to make into a dough. I have tried using a hand crank mill with a masa attachment that produced very finely ground dough. The masa was ideal but very time consuming and a lot of physical work. I ended up figuring out that if I towel dry my hominy after rinsing it I can put it in the food processor and it grinds fairly well. It can still be a bit coarse sometimes. Still delicious nonetheless.
I’ve read in a Native American Southwest cook book that plant ashes were cooked with cornmeal and then eaten together. It makes sense to me to cook the corn like this because I have more options for grinding dry corn than wet, but it isn’t something I’ve tried yet. I’m a bit skeptical about the taste.
I also really like grits and they’re an easy dish to turn into something very savory and comforting. I treat them like I’m making risotto.
I grind my dry corn using a vitamix for coarse grinds, and a hand crank mill for finer and more even grinds. The hand crank takes a lot of work. It’s better to have a good electric mill, or a friend with one.
Heidi A
We have chicos around here. My best understanding so far on how to make them traditionally is that corn is picked at “sweet” stage (regardless of type of corn, so flour corn too), roasted in the ear (so they’re pre-cooking), and then hung in the sun to dry. At this point, they can be stored in the freezer or on the shelf. You add them to soups just like posole and beans – so soaking with the beans and simmering until soft. There’s no liming process, so it’s a bit quicker, and no grinding. Chicos have a smoky taste.
I will make that soup thanks @Lowell_McCampbell! There are some gems in these comments that need to live forever. And grinding corn then cooking it with ashes is great info, where did you read that?.. My plan tomorrow is to nixtamlize and grind a big batch of corn, then freeze it in meal size balls to pull out when I make tacos. My current method of eating my corn is waayy too much work and I am busy with things like copy and pasting, obviously 
For grain corn I highly recommend chochoyotes. I have made them with dried store-bought masa since I’m doing seed increases on my corn so far, but they’re basically masa (could use dried or fresh & ground in a food processor), lard, salt, and water mixed into a stiff paste and tossed into any soup or stew you can imagine. Tomato or chicken soup (instead of noodles with the chicken) is delightful. I’ve mostly put mine into kimchi stew with pork, sometimes mushrooms, cabbage, and obviously kimchi which is basically the best thing ever.
I am looking for the pdf book of native american foods and it is going to kill me bc I cannot find it. It was on a resource page somewhere on some seed company and it was a link to a free pdf. I can picture the page with all the books in my mind but no idea what company it was. I’ll keep looking.
Do you put the nixtamalized corn in tacos or do you use it to make the tacos? Either way YUM!
Is this the one you’re thinking of?
Not okra, but I realize my giardiniera is a pretty great garden thing. I make it as hot mixed pickles, vinegar pickles this year but fermentation (omit sugar and most of the vinegar) would work just as well. The key to the flavour is the celery or lovage, bay leaf, and black pepper. It’s good on sandwiches, as hot pickles on the side of a plate or dump a jar of this in with a roast (or I bet lentils or a med-sweet squash and some fat) into a slowcooker or in a dutch oven on the woodstove and come home to a finished meal:
Basic veg mix: 1 part cauliflower, 1 part sweet hot peppers, 1/2 part green hot peppers, 1 part green beans, 1 part carrots, 1/4 part celery (including leaves) all cut into bite-sized pieces
Basic brine mix: 1:1 vinegar:water plus 1/3 cup kosher salt and 1/2 cup sugar into each 3.5L brine, into each 500ml jar add 2 peppercorns, 1 bay leaf, 1 clove garlic
Lightly sweet mixed pickle brine: 1:1 vinegar water plus 1/3 cup kosher salt and 1 cup sugar into 3.5L brine, per 750ml jar add 1/4 tsp mustard, 4-5 coriander seeds, 1 bay leaf, 3 peppercorns
Pour boiling brine onto raw veg in jar, water bath 15 minutes
(Also tried a no-sugar one that was ok too)
Oh my gosh it is! Though I found it somewhere else, not nrcnaa.
Cool! I searched “Native American foods recipes free”.
Do you know of the https://sioux-chef.com/? There’s a cookbook.
For okra we most commonly slice it into rounds and stir fry it with other veggies in a wok or cast iron pan.
For uses for grain corn, I’ve already told Lowell this since we’re both interested in growing njahi/hyacinth bean, but I recently made a corn/njahi soup that was tasty. I suppose you could use most any kind of bean you like - - lots of sources say hyacinth bean is toxic, so it could be different varieties, ignorance, or something else. It’s an important component of traditional diets in Kenya. Its growing was highly discouraged during British occupation. I got mine at a local ethnic grocer.
I took one cup njahi, one cup grain corn, soaked and sprouted both together, then put them into our VitaClay “slow” cooker (it really performs between a slow cooker and instant pot). Added some sad chard and/or another sad vegetable that needed cooked and that I didn’t want to take the time to try and revive. Added water and slow cooked til the beans were tender, then added salt, powdered ginger and cumin, and stirred and let them cook another hour. I’m sure it didn’t need that much time, but I think I cooked it opportunistically during the work day. It came out yummy. Aside from putting a little corn in a pilaf (ok, it didn’t cook tender) and roasting some in the oven as a snack (yummy), I don’t think I’ve ever cooked with grain corn. If you oven roast it some will likely pop though, in the unsatisfying manner of flour corn. That’s my limited experience cooking with dry grain corn anyway.
This is all from a five pound bag of organic blue corn I got from azure standard.
I looked at the corn recipes in the Healthy Traditions cookbook linked above. Is the plant ash added for flavor or as a leavening agent? It’s not obvious to me what the acidic component in the recipes is. Does corn provide enough acidity to react with the ash? Can baking soda be used as a substitute? Wood ash isn’t something I have readily available!
I have that same blue corn from azure Oddly, I don’t find it as easy to work with than the corn I’ve grown. For grits it takes a long time and they don’t get as creamy, for nixtamalizing it produces a wonderful flavor but is kind of chewy. It does make good tortillas if they’re fried and thin enough to avoid the chewiness.
I assume adding the ash is an alternative to nixtamalizing the way it’s done in Mexico (before grinding). I have a video about that, it just needs better subtitles but it will be covered in the next course). Adding lime or ash makes the corn softer, more delicious, and amino acids/more B vitamins/niacin available so people eating don’t get pellagra like they did in Europe and in the South.
Pellagra is a really interesting topic, covered a lot in the excellent book The End of Craving. But instead of recommending what the Indiginous peoples of the Americas knew about cooking corn, there was a giant push to enrich everything with niacin . This is really interesting
I assumed it is for providing a basic pH to nixtamalize the corn some but maybe it’s for flavor. Ash is an easy source of calcium oxide but less concentrated so it takes more ash than using store bought calcium oxide if you’re going to use it for nixtamalizing. The “Blue Corn Bread” recipe uses 1 C of juniper ash which should be enough to nixtamalize the 6 C of cornmeal.
I did not know of the Sioux Chef! Looks like they’re doing some cool stuff. Have you checked out the cookbook?
I’m part way through it now. It’s a fun and educational read. He uses small amounts of ash from specific plants as a flavoring. Nixtamalization is done for a different purpose.
He explains corn this way:
When I’ve looked for actual science on nixtamalization and nutrition before, I’ve been frustrated with the complete lack of good, repeated studies supporting the niacin claim – does anyone have a lead here? It makes sense to me that the nutrient content might vary to start, and then that the type of corn might also cause uptake/availability differences. I wonder if causes for pellagra were more complex – corn was taken out of the full culture when colonized, including ways of growing it (the endophyte inoculation comes to mind), not just nixtamalization or not.
@HAnderson thank you very much for those two summary points. I’d been thinking about reasons to keep flour and flint corns more separate, or less, in my garden and that’s a good data point. I should read it too, it seems!
Squash experiment from the other day that worked nicely: tossing some dry pasta, chunks of squash, and flavourful liquid of your choice just to cover. Simmer until the pasta is cooked and the squash disintegrated, maybe 15 minutes (though this probably depends on your squash, whether it just melts down into a sauce texture). Can season with cheese or oil & nutritional yeast & a little lime juice for a mac’n’cheese vibe, toss some salsa and/or pepper powder and lime juice in for something a little livelier (a little oil of some kind might help this out too), good with just salt and pepper, and probably has lots more leeway to play around with flavour (gochujang? use dashi as the liquid? Spike with sliced onions? Orange juice, nuts, and cranberries? Dried herbs? Cook with corn/nixtamalized corn instead of pasta?). The biggest point is just that it melts down into a beautifully textured sauce while the pasta is cooking, and that the squash, salt, and lime juice saucy combination makes me very happy.
@Greenstorm Your pasta squash dish sounds delicious, and all in one pot which is a bonus!
@HAnderson @Lowell_McCampbell I had the impression that nixtamalization required long cooking of the corn kernels in alkaline water, which made me think the wood ash was doing something else in the baked goods. I came across this page where someone is testing wood ash as a leavening agent: The Homestead Laboratory: Wood Ash Leavening--Biscuit Baking Time!
Heidi, I didn’t realize that there is a lack of data supporting a link between nixtamalization and niacin availability. Thank you for pointing it out. Time to do some reading!
@DebbieA I’m not sure there’s no good data, but all I could find was very soft and/or not cited. Of course this doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Speaking of not citing because I can’t remember where I found these directions: boil the corn with 3 times as much water and 1/4 cup pickling lime in a big soup pot for 2 hrs and then soak all that overnight. Rinse it really well the next day. The long soaking seems to replace the long boiling. It is a lot of work. I’ve only done this twice. It’s an awful lot of water - I’ve wondered if folks living in desert environments would have actually used this much water. In already alkaline soils, the wastewater becomes truly unhelpful…unless it then had another use for something else?
My guess is there are many ways out there to prepare it. With regards to the ash being added directly to recipes, I started wondering if consuming the ash might effect digestion and uptake itself, rather than the corn itself. Sort of like needing to take magnesium along with calcium supplements.