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Okra, Rice and Tomatoes
can tomatoes 2 tablespoons butter Salt and pepper Sprinkle of paprika Wash rice and cook in boiling, salted water until tender; drain, and add butter, salt, pepper and paprika. Cut okra in slices and cook in small quantity of boiling water. When nearly ready, add tomatoes and rice. Serve hot.
The ingredient list has come down to us incomplete — the rice and okra quantities are missing, and only the canned tomatoes, butter and seasonings survive. The method is clear enough to work from, but you are choosing proportions yourself.
- Missing quantitiesThe original gives no amounts for the rice or okra. As a starting point, about 1 cup raw rice, 1 lb fresh okra and one 14-15 oz can of tomatoes, drained, will make a workable dish; adjust to taste. The 2 tablespoons butter is the only quantity the original actually gives.
- "Can tomatoes"Canned tomatoes of the period were commonly sold in sizes larger than the modern 14-15 oz can, and were often packed whole in their juice. Drain a modern can and break the tomatoes up by hand, or the dish turns soupy.
- The hinge: keep the okra dryCook the okra in the smallest possible amount of water, uncovered, and stop while the slices still hold their shape. Long stewing in liquid is what makes okra ropy; the acid from the tomatoes, added at the end, helps cut what mucilage there is.
- Order of assemblyThe rice is buttered and seasoned separately before it joins the pan. The original adds tomatoes and rice to the okra while it is still cooking; if you want the grains to stay distinct, fold rather than stir once everything is together.
- PaprikaThe paprika called for here would have been a sweet, unsmoked kind, used as much for color as for flavor. It is not hot; smoked paprika will change the dish entirely.
- Frozen okraCut frozen okra works and needs no water at all — thaw, drain well, and cook it in the butter until the surface dries before the tomatoes go in.
- YieldAt the quantities suggested above, this makes four to six side-dish servings. Salt at the end: canned tomatoes vary widely and the rice has already been cooked in salted water.
This is a relative of the Gulf Coast dish that Creole and Lowcountry cooks knew as okra and tomatoes, or in fuller versions okra gumbo — okra, tomatoes and rice being the standing trio of Southern summer cookery, with the okra itself carried to the Americas from West Africa and its name generally traced to Igbo okuru. What is notable here is the canned tomato: by the time The Metropolitan Cook Book was circulating, commercially canned tomatoes had made a summer vegetable dish into a year-round one, and a recipe that once began with peeling and scalding ripe tomatoes could begin with a can opener. Books like this one were issued as promotional literature by an insurance company for the household it hoped to keep solvent, and a cheap, filling, one-pan vegetable dish sat comfortably in that mission.