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Fried Chicken with Okras
Take a very tender chicken, clean and cut into joints suitable for frying, season with salt and pepper, and roll them in flour. Wash two dozen pods of okras and slice them thinly, throwing away the stems. Peel and slice one medium-sized onion; cut a quarter of a pound of ham in half-inch dice and chop one small green or red fresh pepper, very fine. First fry the chicken and ham brown, putting them into enough smoking hot lard to half cover them; then add the okras, onion and pepper and enough broth, cold gravy, or boiling water to cover all. Season to taste with salt and stew gently until both chicken and vegetables are quite tender. If the broth becomes thicker while cooking than ordinary gravy, add to it a little boiling water. Fried oysters may be added to the preparation just before serving. It is usual to serve a dish of plain boiled rice with this dish.
A smothered chicken in the Creole manner, closer to a soupy fricassee than to anything crisp. The okra is the thickener, so treat it as you would a roux.
- The hinge: two stages of heatBrown the floured chicken and ham hard in shallow fat, then drop the heat once the liquid goes in and hold it at a bare simmer, as the recipe directs. A hard boil will loosen the flour coating and cook the okra to mush.
- "A very tender chicken"Probably a young frying bird in the region of 2 1/2 to 3 lb, jointed. The recipe gives no timing: stew until the meat and vegetables are quite tender, which will take appreciably longer with a modern large roaster than with a small fryer.
- Two dozen okra podsRoughly 3/4 lb, giving about 4 cups sliced. Pick pods under 4 inches; larger ones are woody and the seeds turn hard. Frozen cut okra works, added straight from the bag without thawing.
- The fatLard is still the right choice and gives the cleanest flavor here. "Enough to half cover" the joints means fat coming halfway up the pieces in a wide, heavy pan, not a mere film. Peanut oil is a fair substitute; butter will scorch at the temperature wanted.
- The hamMost likely a dry salt-cured ham of the country-ham type rather than modern sandwich ham, though the recipe says only "ham." A quarter pound carries real salt; the recipe salts the pot before stewing, but tasting at the end is the safer course.
- Okra and slimeThe mucilage is the point — it is what thickens the gravy. Slice the pods just before they go in, and resist stirring the pot more than necessary once it is simmering.
- The oystersAdd them at the last moment as written, and no earlier. Oysters held in a simmering pot for even five minutes go tough; they need only to heat through.
- Yield and servingFour generous servings. The plain boiled rice is not optional in spirit — the dish is deliberately loose, and the rice is what carries the gravy.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection ranges far beyond the Waldorf's own dining room, and this dish is one of its Southern and Creole entries. Okra came to the Americas from West Africa with the slave trade ", the word itself is usually traced to Igbo dụ