Okra and Rice
1/2 cup rice 1/2 onion, chopped 1 tablespoon oil 1 1/2 cups tomatoes 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon thyme 1 small bay leaf, crushed 1 cup canned okra, or boiled fresh okra 1 teaspoon flour Cook the onion and flour in the oil till browned. Boil the rice according to the recipe for boiled rice. Then mix all the ingredients together, and heat in a double boiler.
A Creole-style rice and okra side dish that assembles three separately cooked components rather than stewing them together. Everything hinges on the okra going in already cooked and the mixture only being warmed through.
- The roux is tinyOne teaspoon of flour in one tablespoon of oil is barely a paste; it is there for colour and a faint thickening, not body. The recipe browns the onion and flour together in the oil, and the browned mixture is then combined with the other ingredients rather than having the tomatoes added to the pan.
- Tomatoes"1 1/2 cups tomatoes" may be canned tomatoes with their juice, roughly the contents of a standard small can, or stewed fresh ones; the recipe does not say. Break them up with a spoon; the liquid is what carries the seasoning into the rice.
- Boiled riceHalf a cup of raw rice yields about 1 1/2 cups cooked. Cook it in plenty of salted water and drain it well, which keeps the grains separate and keeps the finished dish from turning to porridge.
- Okra, already cookedCanned okra needs only draining. Fresh okra should be boiled or steamed until just tender, 5 to 8 minutes for small pods, then drained. Cutting it and stirring it hard releases the mucilage, so fold it in at the end with a light hand.
- Why the double boilerDirect heat at this stage would scorch the rice at the bottom and cook the okra to mush. A bowl set over simmering water, or the lowest possible burner with frequent stirring, brings it to serving heat in 10 to 15 minutes without further cooking anything.
- SeasoningThree-quarters of a teaspoon of salt assumes unsalted canned tomatoes and unsalted okra; taste before adding it all. The thyme and crushed bay go in with everything else and are only warmed through, so the herb flavour stays light.
- YieldRoughly 4 cups finished, enough for three or four as a side dish. It reheats acceptably but the okra softens further.
Okra, rice, tomato, thyme and bay is the standard vocabulary of Gulf Coast and Lowcountry cooking, drawing on West African okra and the rice culture of the Carolina and Louisiana coasts. Dishes of this kind are inexpensive and meatless — no stock, no bacon, nothing but a spoonful of oil for richness — and the same combination turns up in economical and regional Southern cookery alike. The instruction to reheat over water rather than over flame suits a kitchen where a double boiler was to hand and stove heat was hard to regulate finely.