Delicious Side-Dish with Okra, Rice-Shaped Noodles, Garlic, Tomatoes and Aleppo Pepper

Okra is such a versatile and not always easy to match vegetable, especially for people like me, who didn't grow up with. As many other food-related products, I've discovered okra relatively late, but through trials and errors, I've discovered my own dish combinations. 

But I haven't try anything new for a long time, maybe for too long. It is not always easy to find the fresh product - and I am not a supporter of frozen veggies anyway - and most of the shops selling it are located quite far away from me. Sometimes, I was simply not in the good mood for paying the full attention requested by preparing a recipe with an ingredient so unfamiliar to my usual eating habits. 

The wonder happened yesterday and I was not only happy to taste okra again, but also to scribble fast the main directions of a new recipe. 

You can use this as a side dish - a good company to a meaty meal - or if you want more consistency, to add some shredded yellow cheese to make it into an autonomous meal. It suits very well white fish.

It is easy to prepare - you only need 45 minutes - and delicious for the palate, as well as healthy.

Ingredients

200 gr. fresh okra, finelly cut in rondels

2 tablespoons olive oil

6 cloves garlic, finelly cut

5 middle-sized tomatoes, finelly sliced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon Aleppo Pepper

100 gr. rice-shaped noodles. it goes very well with rice

2 tablespoon cooking oil

Directions for preparing the okra mix

Warm the oil in a pan at medium heat. When it start sizzling, add the okra and keep mixing in order to have them fried on both sides. After 5 minutes add the garlic and keep mixing. Sprinkle the salt and add the tomatoes. Mix well for another 5 minutes. When ready, add the Aleppo Pepper, mix well and put it on the side.

For the rice-shaped noodles

In a pot, add the oil and warm it for a couple of minutes. Add the rice noodle and mix it well with the oil. Pour water, at a ration of 2 cups of water for a cup of rice noodles. Mix it well and leave it boil for around 15 minutes.

When the noodles are ready, add the okra mixture and mix it well while heated at medium size temperature for another couple of minutes.

Now, it is ready to be served, either as an independent dish or as a side dish to meat or fish.

Serves: 3

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Bon Appétit!

Cookbook Recommendation: Totally Eggplant, by Helene Siegel

I do have a rather tragic personal relationship with eggplants. Although at home we used to have regularly fried eggplant often turned into baba ganoush - the only way our nanny knew to prepare it - I never been a big fan of it therefore my interest to this veggie - actually according to some opinions, it is considered a fruit, following the same school of thought which includes tomato in the same category - was limited to observing the long process of preparing it on the stove. But when once I wanted to have a taste of eggplant in a restaurant, it happened that the product was slightly overdue therefore I caught an allergy that was about to cost my precious life. Since then - it happened over 10 years ago - I only tried to do my own recipe only once and the results were just fine, but nothing to make me want to go early in the morning out of the house and buy eggplants for a challenging food tasting and testing. 

I would love to change this situation though, therefore my search for sources of inspiration convincing me to include it in my regular menu. Totally Eggplant by Helene Siegel is a very good beginning in this respect. It includes very easy recipes, for a meal shared with guests, with a very fast preparation time.

It helps the reader - especially the non-experienced one - that it is 'a vegetable of many possibilities not only grilling'. Instead of frying, it offers the healthier and quicker option of roasting, in combination with many interesting ingredients and spices. The most challenging part of the recipes is that you usually need minimum 5 ingredients, because its original taste is quite diverse and matches a large variety of additions, such as curry, miso, onions and garlic, meat, vinaigrette, fish. For instance, one of the recipes I would love to test is: couscous with eggplant and pine nuts (which includes cumin, parsley, cinnamon and onion). Polenta eggplant lasagne sounds good too. Most of the recipes recommend though the new star of the European farmers' markets: the Japanese eggplant, which can be also produced in Spain, corkscrew shaped, longer and thinnier, milder and less bitter than the original variant we are familiar with. The book also has some short historical snaphots, explaining the origin of that product of the earth considered by the 16th century Ottomans as 'the Lord of the vegetables': probably brought to America by African slaves along with okra, watermelon or black eye peas.

Totally Eggplant is an enjoyable read, with a lot of tasty inspiration. Can't wait to get in the right mood to try some recipes, hopefully soon. 

Tempura Veggies with Tilapia Fish

I love a crunchy, moderately hot tempura very much, but the chances of finding a high-end vegetarian option are pretty limited, as in most cases the batter is used for frying prawns and other sea foods which I am not interested to taste. Why not having my own home-made tempura, then which except the messy mess in the kitchen that requested some extra cleaning powers, was relatively easy to make and delicious on the plate?

Practically, tempura batter works with any kind of vegetables, and fish too. You can also try the same recipe for meat too, with the tempura batter a substitute for the bread crumbs for the schnitzel, for instance. I recommend to serve it with a soy sauce on the side - I used it a sweet version - or add some black sesame seeds for additional decoration - and extra taste too.

Ingredients (used for a batch serving 4)

500 gr. tilapia fish, cut into 6 small pieces. I really love this low fat white fish, which goes to easily with almost any kind of side dish, from fried veggies to potatoes or rice. I bought it fresh from the fish market and didn't need to use any additional lemon juice as in the case of the frozen fish (which I don't fancy at all, the after-frozen taste being one of the reasons)

500 gr. tempura batter mix. I used the Obento made in Korea, with satisfactory results, as it coated the veggies into a velvet covering

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups cold mineral water. You can use tap water too, but I decided that mineral water interacts much better with the batter. Some recommend also to use instead of water low alcoholic beer, but I would rather test this for some chicken. 

7 small white champignons

7 medium-sized okra, halved and with the ends cut out

1 medium-sized onion, sliced into rings

1 medium-sized purple sweet potato, sliced into rounds. I only cut the ends out, without peeling it. It is very easy going in the pan, 

750 ml. cooking oil. Sesame oil can be also used, but the smell and consistency are too heavy for my taste. 

100 gr. sweet soy sauce for the dressing

Additionally, you need also a couple of kitchen napkins to be used for absorbing the extra oil from the fried veggies and fish.

Other veggies which might suit a tempura batter for me as well are: any kind of potatoes, bell, red or yellow pepper, olives, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, pumpkin. In Japan almost all the veggies can be used, such as salad or cabbage but I am not a big fun of such combinations. For the hipsters among you, kale can also be used.

Directions
15 minutes before you are ready with the fish and vegetables, warm the oil at 250C. Many (normal) people use some special thermometers to check when the right temperature is reached, but I am not yet one of them.
Prepare the tempura: add the batter, the water and the salt and mix well into the water until you have a compact paste. Add the veggies, one by one, into the batter and coat them by turn each piece on all sides until completely covered up. You can use the same batter for all the ingredients, or separate it into different portions for each of the veggies. However, you may use the oil for frying all the ingredients, it does not make too much sense to take this precaution as in the end, the same taste will be shared anyway.
After each batch of veggies I've clean the oil from the burned rests. At the beginning I only used 500 ml. oil and as the liquid diminished during frying to add more until it reached a satisfactory level for properly soaking the pieces of veggies or the fish.
I tried to have in the frying pan maximum 5 pieces at the same time, as the heat is equally distributed among them and the more there are the slower the frying process.
The main problem is that when the oil is too hot, you are not sure that the veggies - or the fish - are properly fried, therefore, for the potatoes and the fish once the coating was done, I left them in the oven at 250C for another couple of minutes.

You can also add some fresh tomatoes or avocado on the side, to cut out the excess of oil.
As the batter tastes neutral in taste, I am also thinking to use it for baking bananas or pineapple, which might help me to reproduce some Asian desserts I love.

Preparation time (including the time spent waiting for the oil to drain): 40 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Cleaning time for all the (many) tools used: 20 minutes

My first try was for the win, and most probably would keep experiencing and sharing with my readers my latest adventures in the world of tempura.

Until then...

Bon Appétit!

My first yellow curry noodles recipe

It is not a secret that I usually create my meals based on foods I taste and like in restaurants. As someone who dealt for a long time with various eating disorders, I avoided for a long time to touch many foods therefore, creating my own recipes was impossible at the beginning as I did not know how to match the tastes. Those times are hopefully long gone, but there are still a lot of combinations I am unfamiliar with and at a certain point it is normal, especially when it comes to foods I haven't grow up with.

A couple of days ago, exhausted after too many baby tantrums and home chores, I decided to eat out, at a new Vegetarian street food Vietnamese restaurant around the corner. I ordered a yellow curry with veggies and was delighted and a couple of days after, I tried to recreate my own recipe (I added okra and eliminated the tofu).

Here is my (relatively) limited success:

Ingredients
1 pack Mie Asli Indonesian noodles - they are spices with turmeric, quick to cook and suitable for any kind of noodle dishes
400 ml. coconut milk
1 medium onion sliced
100 gr. okra cut in rondels
150 gr. sweet corn halved
one medium sized yellow pepper cut into small pieces
two tablespoon corn oil
1/2 teaspoon of rasped ginger
3 tablespoon yellow curry pasta

Directions

In a pan, add the curry pasta and the oil and mix well at 250C, until it gets a sauce consistency. If necessary, add some water and mix well for around 5 minutes.

Separately, boil water and add the Mie noodles. After 5 minutes, pour the water out, mix the noodles and eventually add some cold water.

In a pan, at 250 add the coconut milk and mix until it boils, for around 3 minutes. Add the onion, okra, pepper, the yellow corn and mix until is boiling - an average of around 10 minutes. Continue with the yellow curry sauce and the noodles. Mix well for another 3 minutes.

Serve it hot.

My only problem was the choice of the yellow curry pasta which was not the best quality, therefore the taste was not a bit different of what I had at the restaurant but also a little - but only a little bit - rancid.

As a first time experience it was great to test my cooking abilities and probably I need to do more documentation the next time when I am trying, especially when it comes to the choice of the curry.

Preparation time

15 minutes

Cooking time

20 minutes

Serves 4

Bon Appétit!

In the back kitchen of the famous Poole's

Poole's and its chef Ashley Christensen are becoming one of the iconic successes of the new American cuisine. Often despised in Europe for its lack of sophistication, the chefs on the other side of the ponds worked hard and succeeded to change the stereotypes about the US food culture.

The book is attractive not only for the interesting recipes and the story behind them - mostly happy childhood tasty memories - but also for the mouth-watering pictures, here to prove that, indeed, you should give a try to the recipes. 

This foodie version of the American dream, Poole's in Raleigh, means also a different philosophy when it comes to creating new dishes: 'For each and every dish, we start by breaking it down, piece by piece and examining it, from the ingredients on up through every single step. We pay meticulous attention to the details to make sure every thing is in balance and the final product is absolutely delicious while still respecting its identity and original story'. 

Labeled mostly as 'Southern kitchen', the cuisine tasted at Poole's go beyond any geographical attribution. It uses an eclectic mix of spices and ingredients, it creates new food habits and explore new tastes. What do you think, for instance, about 'popcorn with Dijon, olive oil, and Parmigiano Reggiano'? Or 'thuna tartare with Piment d'Esplete and cucumber'? Or cornmeal fried okra with tabasco mayo? I am particularly tempted by the watermelon with avocado, goat cheese, basil and sweet onion, featured on the cover. The recipes presented cover all the usual meals, from the entrees to the cocktails and sweets. I must confess that maybe there are too much liver-based recipes for my poor taste, but this is my one and only problem. As for now, I wish I have the strength to test the challah bread pudding with whiskey, apples and sour cream. Because it is never too late to try something completely new in your life.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the published in exchange of an honest review

Tofu Shirataki Fettuccine

Long time not (too much) cooking. After so many weeks of travel and even more delicious foodie invitations I could not resist, I am finally trying to get back on the cooking track. Till now, I did bake some bread - one with oregano and another with onion, but nothing noteworthy to share till now. Yesterday, we went to do some basic shopping at the Asian shop in Charlottenburg, when I was advised by the careful S. to do not dare to leave the shop without buying the pack of Tofu Shirataki. As it definitely suited the budget - it costs around 3 Euro and the kosher standards - it does have a delicate OU sign on its left, as many other tofu sorts I noticed a couple of weeks back - I put it in the basket.

Today, I tried to get used with it and even prepare it with some available ad-hoc ingredients we have in the kitchen.

The fettuccine were preserved in alkaline liquid that smells really unusual - you can add 'bad' as a proper description as well. After 4-5 minutes of rinsing under cold water, the smell disappears. For the rest of the preparation, I behave as I do in the presence of noodles:

Added in a pan

garlic (3 cloves) and scallions on taste (3 pcs.) - finely chopped

3 teaspoon of oil - olive oil is a good choice

5 pieces of okra - finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon of cumin powder

Mixed in the pan together with the fettuccine and after 7 minutes, were ready.

It serves 2 and we played a bit the Asian experts eating it with the chopsticks.

The taste of fettuccine is neutral so some sprinkles of salt will balance the taste pretty well.

Another detail of the fettuccine is the low calories content, with an estimated 20 calories per serving. 

Bon Appétit!

Fast lunch with my dear okra

During the normal lunch time I have a lot of work to do or to be finished as soon as possible and the time is the most precious asset. However, this is the time of the day when the school finish and the hungry diamonds are back and I better be ready to welcome them with the open heart and a warm food.

Thanks to my imagination, I do my lunch homeworks well and in due time. Take, for instance, yesterday, when I combined the following ingredients:

200 gr. okra, finelly chopped

100 gr. white mushrooms, finelly chopped as well

150 gr. cherry tomatoes

1 tablespoon coriander

1/4 tablespoon cayenne

1/2 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon almonds

150 cl. sunflower oil - butter or vegetable margarine can be used as well

All the above ingredients were added in the pan and fried together for around 20 minutes. In less than half an hour, the healthy lunch was ready to be eaten. 

Bon Appetit!

Okra ideas

I am a late fan of okra, a vegetable that I discovered a couple of years ago only. At the beginning, I was not sure how I should cook it, but following some discussions with experienced chefs, I succeeded to find the perfect combination and to calculate correctly the cooking time.

I usually use okra for salads - always with olive oil - but especially together with pasta. But for me it is never enough, I gave a chance to a combination not included in any cookbook: peanuts - finelly chopped, with okra. You can fry them together in a pan for a couple of minutes, or eat it raw. I rather prefer the first possibility. Once you've found the right type of okra, fresh, without black traces, and the peanuts - the salted one - in less than 10 minutes your treat is ready. To be eated in the morning, at lunch or supper, as side dish or individual meal. 

Bon appetit!

Learning to love okra

A good and healthy dish for the beginning of the week, via NYTimes.
Enjoy!

Salad of Fresh Vegetables with Tofu

Easy to make, tasty and in just 13 minutes, for 3-4 persons:
250 gr. soft/silky tofu
3 tomatoes
100 gr. garden beans
100 gr. okra

You can add some oil, but without it's still tasty.
Bon appetit!

Monday histories: Short story with okra

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus Moench, known also as “lady's fingers” or gumbo) is cultivated in various tropical, subtropical and warm temperate regions around the world for its fibrous fruits or pods with white seeds. It can be frozen, pickled and canned and it goes well with tomatoes, onions, peppers and eggplant.

History

One of the earliest accounts of the vegetable is by a Spanish Moor who visited Egypt in 1216, who described the plant under cultivation by the locals who ate the tender, young pods with meal. It was brought to the “New World” around 1600, with the first transports of slaves.

In Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Yemen, and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus and Israel, okra is widely used in a thick stew made with vegetables and meat. It is one of the most popular vegetables among West Asians, North Indians and Pakistanis alike. In most of West Asia, okra is known as bamia or bamya. West Asian cuisine usually uses young okra pods and they are usually cooked whole. In India, the harvesting is done at a later stage, when the pods and seeds are larger.

It is popular in India and Pakistan, where chopped pieces are stir fried with spices, pickled, salted or added to gravy-based preparations like Bhindi Ghosht or sambar. In western parts of India (Gujarat, Maharashtra), okra is often stir-fried with some sugar. Okra is also used in Kadhi. The ladies finger is used to make sambar (kodel) in Udupi cuisine.

In Singapore, okra is commonly a part of yong tau food – a Chinese soup dish - cuisine. As a part of the cuisine, it is stuffed with processed fish paste (Surimi) and boiled with a selection of vegetables and tofu. It is then served in a soup with noodles.

The vegetable

The species is an annual or perennial, growing to 2 m tall. It is related to such species as cotton, cocoa, and hibiscus. The leaves are 10–20 cm long and broad, palmately lobed with 5–7 lobes. The flowers are 4–8 cm diameter, with five white to yellow petals, often with a red or purple spot at the base of each petal. The fruit is a capsule up to 18 cm long, containing numerous seeds.

The products of the plant are mucilaginous, resulting in the characteristic "goo" or slime when the seed pods are cooked; the mucilage contains a usable form of soluble fiber. While many people enjoy okra cooked this way, others prefer to minimise sliminess; keeping the pods intact and cooking quickly help to achieve this. To avoid sliminess, okra pods are often briefly stir-fried, or cooked with acidic ingredients such as citrus, tomatoes, or vinegar. A few drops of lemon juice will usually suffice. Alternatively the pods can be sliced thinly and cooked for a long time, so that the mucilage dissolves, as in gumbo. The cooked leaves can also be used as a powerful soup thickener. The young pods may also be pickled.

Dishes

It can be served raw, marinated in salads or cooked on its own, and goes well with tomatoes, onions, corn, peppers, and eggplant. Whole, fresh okra pods also make excellent pickles. Its mild flavor can be compared to eggplant, though the texture is somewhat unusual.

In the Caribbean islands, okra is eaten as soup, often with fish. In Haiti it is cooked with rice and maize, and also used as a sauce for meat. It became a popular vegetable in Japanese cuisine toward the end of the 20th century, served with soy sauce and katsuobushi – the name for a preparation of dried, fermented and smoked skipjack tuna -, or as tempura.

Okra forms part of several regional "signature" dishes. Frango com quiabo (chicken with okra) is a Brazilian dish that is especially famous in the region of Minas Gerais. Gumbo, a hearty stew whose key ingredient is okra, is found throughout the Gulf Coast of the United States and in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Breaded, deep fried okra is eaten in the southern United States. Okra is also an ingredient expected in kallaloo, a Caribbean dish and the national dish of Trinidad and Tobago. It is also a part of the national dish of Barbados coucou (turned cornmeal). Okra is also eaten in Nigeria, where draw soup is a popular dish, often eaten with garri or cassava – knows also as manioc. In Vietnam, okra is the important ingredient in the canh chua – sour soup dish from the Mekong Delta. Okra slices can also be added to ratatouille, combining very well with the other ingredients of this French popular dish.

The Thai variant – which I used by now - is keeping the same taste and texture, but might look as a medium zucchini.

How and what to cook

Okra may be stored in the refrigerator in a paper bag or wrapped in a paper towel in a perforated plastic bag for 2 to 3 days, or it may be frozen for up to 12 months after blanching whole for 2 minutes. Cooked okra can be stored (tightly covered) in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days.

The leaves may be cooked in a similar way to the greens of beets or dandelions. The leaves are also eaten raw in salads. The seeds may be roasted and ground to form a caffeinate-free substitute for coffee.

Common Okra seed is reported to contain only 15% oil.  The oil is extracted from the seeds, resulting greenish-yellow edible oil with a pleasant taste and odor, high in unsaturated fats such as oleic acid and linoleic acid. The oil content of the seed can at about 40%. Oil yields from okra crops are also high. At 794 kg/ha, the yield was exceeded only by that of sunflower oil in one trial.

Also, okra can be dried and ground into a powder, to use as a thickening agent for soups and sauces.

Culinary use// Source: USDA Nutrient database

Raw

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)

Energy           129 kJ (31 kcal)

Carbohydrates        7.03 g

Sugars           1.20 g

Dietary fiber            3.2 g

Fat      0.10 g

Protein          2.00 g

Water            90.17 g

My experience

The first encounter was very bad, as I had lacked any basic experience and bibliography in dealing with. After boiling it for 15 minutes, the result was a terribly gummy vegetable, with a disgusting aspect. I got the recommendation of frying it by didn’t try it yet. By now, I used only the Thai - Siam herbs branded - but I am ready to try the tempura version in the days to come.

Here are some links for okra recipes:

http://southernfood.about.com/library/weekly/aa081401b.htm

http://www.seasonalchef.com/recipe0905f.htm

African recipes - http://www.africhef.com/Okra-Recipes.html