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Fresh Okras in Cream
Cut the stems from thirty-six medium, tender, sound okras and thoroughly wash in cold water; drain well, then place in a saucepan with a quart hot water, pint milk, a white onion with two cloves stuck in it and one teaspoon salt, and slowly boil thirty-five minutes. Carefully drain on a sieve, arrange on a vegetable dish. Pour a cream sauce over them and serve.
A straightforward boiled vegetable dish from the era when okra was cooked well past tenderness. The only real intervention needed is the clock.
- Cut the cooking timeThirty-five minutes at a slow boil leaves okra collapsed and stringy. Tender young pods are done in 8 to 12 minutes, when a knife tip slides through the thickest part with slight resistance.
- Keep the pods wholeTrim only the stem cap and do not cut into the pod. Slicing releases the mucilage into the liquid; intact pods stay comparatively firm and the finished dish is not slippery.
- Why milk and waterThe pint of milk in the cooking liquid keeps the pods pale and softens the vegetal edge. It also scorches easily, so use a heavy pan, keep the heat at a bare simmer, and expect the liquid to be discarded.
- The onion with clovesAn onion studded with cloves, a common aromatic treatment. The recipe calls for a white onion with two whole cloves stuck in it; it flavors the liquid and goes out with it when the pods are drained.
- QuantityThirty-six medium pods is roughly a pound, give or take, which would serve about four as a side dish. Size varies enormously; go by weight and choose pods no longer than about four inches, since large ones are woody.
- Drain hardAny cooking liquid clinging to the pods will thin the sauce and make it weep on the platter. Let them sit on the sieve a full minute, then blot the dish before arranging.
- The cream sauceThe recipe does not give one; a period cream sauce is generally a butter-and-flour white sauce cooked without coloring, whisked with hot milk or cream and simmered until it coats a spoon, then seasoned to taste. One teaspoon of salt in a quart of water and a pint of milk will not season the pods much, so season the sauce properly.
- Serve at onceOkra dulls and turns gray-green as it stands, and the sauce skins over. Sauce the pods at the table's edge, not in the kitchen.
Okra came to American kitchens through the Atlantic slave trade from West Africa, where the plant and several of its names originate; the word okra is generally traced to Igbo okwuru, while gumbo is generally traced to a western Bantu term for the same pod. By the period of books like this one, okra was firmly a Southern and Creole vegetable in the United States, mostly stewed with tomatoes or thickening gumbo. Presenting it whole under a cream sauce, poached in milk with a clove-studded onion, runs in the other direction: it takes a regional vegetable and dresses it in the plain white-sauce vocabulary applied to asparagus, salsify and cauliflower alike -- the working method of the large compilation cookbooks, which collected dishes from everywhere and served many of them under a béchamel.