Growing up in Alabama, I always thought of okra as the quintessentially Southern vegetable. It showed up slimy in gumbo and crunchy in a cornmeal crust on the cafeteria line, and (all too often, I thought as a kid) my mom would sautee it with a little sugar and salt in her biggest cast-iron skillet, until the edges were black and all the slime was gone. Though I didn't have many picky moments growing up, okra was something I would never willingly have chosen to eat until fairly recently. I started cooking the pods whole, just boiling them in plain salt water for about 5 minutes until they're tender, and I really like them this way, just crunched up whole like a green bean or miniature corn cob. Unlike my mother, I would much rather eat slimy food than deal with cleaning a slimy cutting board, and my method of cooking okra completely eliminates mess of any kind.
I've been eating okra quite frequently as a result of discovering this simple method of preparation, so when I saw the box of purple okra at my vegetable man's stand last week, I couldn't resist, even though I already had a bag of normal green okra from Kawakami Farm in my refrigerator. I'd never seen purple okra before, and I was a bit disappointed when the vegetable man told me they would turn green when cooked. As a test (and to save time) I decided to cook all my okra, green and purple, together. Sure enough, the purple hue began to fade within a few minutes of being thrown into the boiling water, but as the photo shows, it never did turn quite as green as the regular kind - instead it took on a sort of khaki shade. As for flavor, the Kawakami Farm okra was the winner, much more tender and juicy. But I'm not sure that color had anything to do with that.
Growing up in Alabama, I always thought of okra as the quintessentially Southern vegetable. It showed up slimy in gumbo and crunchy in a cornmeal crust on the cafeteria line, and (all too often, I thought as a kid) my mom would sautee it with a little sugar and salt in her biggest cast-iron skillet, until the edges were black and all the slime was gone. Though I didn't have many picky moments growing up, okra was something I would never willingly have chosen to eat until fairly recently. I started cooking the pods whole, just boiling them in plain salt water for about 5 minutes until they're tender, and I really like them this way, just crunched up whole like a green bean or miniature corn cob. Unlike my mother, I would much rather eat slimy food than deal with cleaning a slimy cutting board, and my method of cooking okra completely eliminates mess of any kind.
I've been eating okra quite frequently as a result of discovering this simple method of preparation, so when I saw the box of purple okra at my vegetable man's stand last week, I couldn't resist, even though I already had a bag of normal green okra from Kawakami Farm in my refrigerator. I'd never seen purple okra before, and I was a bit disappointed when the vegetable man told me they would turn green when cooked. As a test (and to save time) I decided to cook all my okra, green and purple, together. Sure enough, the purple hue began to fade within a few minutes of being thrown into the boiling water, but as the photo shows, it never did turn quite as green as the regular kind - instead it took on a sort of khaki shade. As for flavor, the Kawakami Farm okra was the winner, much more tender and juicy. But I'm not sure that color had anything to do with that.
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