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Okra, Andalouse
Trim, wash and drain twenty-four good-sized fresh, tender, sound okras. Peel and cut in slices four good-sized fresh peeled red tomatoes. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a saucepan, add one finely chopped white onion and gently brown five minutes, then add the okras and tomatoes. Season with a light teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and half teaspoon parsley. Carefully mix. Cover pan, then set in oven one hour. Remove, pour into a hot dish. Arrange three freshly prepared slices of toast, cut in half, around the dish and serve.
A plain braise of okra and tomato that depends almost entirely on how the okra is handled and how hot the oven is — neither of which the original states.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A covered vegetable braise of this kind belongs at a moderate oven, 350F. Any hotter and the tomato reduces to jam before the okra is tender.
- Leave the pods wholeTwenty-four pods trimmed but not sliced is the hinge; the recipe says only to trim, wash and drain them, and reserves slicing for the tomatoes. Cut okra weeps mucilage into the pan; whole pods with only the tough stem cap pared off stay firm and the sauce stays loose. Trim the cap without cutting into the seed cavity.
- Twenty-four okrasThree to four inches each, which is what 'good-sized' means for tender okra; somewhere between three-quarters of a pound and a pound in all. Pods bigger and tougher than that stay woody at this length of cooking and no amount of braising will fix them.
- A tablespoon of butterThin for a pan of vegetables that will cook an hour. Two to three tablespoons, or butter with a little olive oil, gives the onion something to brown in and keeps the base from catching.
- "A light teaspoon"A scant teaspoon — filled but not heaped. The half teaspoon of parsley means chopped fresh; add it at the end rather than the beginning, where an hour in the oven will flatten it.
- Peeling the tomatoesWorth doing as written. Skins detach during the braise and curl into leathery threads. Thirty seconds in boiling water and a cold plunge slips them off.
- TimingAn hour is generous for good pods. Start checking at 40 minutes; the okra should yield to a knife tip while holding its shape.
- Yield and servingServes four as a side, or three as a light supper with the toast. Cut the toast when the dish comes out of the oven, not before, or it will be leather by the time it reaches the table.
The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its titles follow the French menu conventions of the professional kitchen of the period. À l'andalouse is one of those conventions: a garnish or preparation built on tomato and, usually, sweet peppers, the name gesturing at Andalusia in southern Spain rather than at any specific Andalusian dish. Here the peppers have dropped away and the tomato does the work alone. The okra itself came to American cooking from West Africa by way of the slave trade and the Caribbean, and by 1900 was thoroughly established in Southern and Creole kitchens — Filippini's other okra entries lean gumbo-ward. Setting it in a covered pan in the oven rather than on the range, and ringing the dish with toast points, is the hotel dining room's way of turning a regional vegetable into something that could be plated at a New York table.