Seriously, we can only eat so much fried okra.

Roasted okra and tomatoes with chili garlic vinaigrette. © Ryan Schierling

My first experience with okra was decidedly unpleasant – an unfortunate "high-brow" circumstance wherein a vegetable galette included its overly-mucilaginous presence.

Then we moved to Texas. If you know anyone with a big garden in these parts, you're certain to find okra offered to you by the cubic bushel in late summer. Okra thrives in the heat and seems to defy the sun-baked earth, and it's been showing up on our doorstep for the last few weeks.

So, how do you say "no" – in good conscience – to the pound of okra that arrives with every late summer CSA delivery? We joined for the local and seasonal offerings, and it just wouldn't be right to turn it away or not make good use of it. 

What exactly are you supposed to do with this stuff? Common wisdom points immediately in the direction of pickling, making gumbo, or battering and frying. But there's only so much pickled okra that's going to get eaten at our house this year, and if I'm going to make a mess of my cooktop with a pot of boiling fat... well, I can't honestly say that okra is the first thing I'd choose to fry up.

In a flash of merciful recollection, Ryan remembered seeing a recipe for roasted okra and cauliflower salad in a cookbook we got last year – Smoke and Pickles by Chef Edward Lee. It has been our salvation over the past few weeks of CSA deliveries. (You can also find it featured in this post by CBS The Talk, where he was a guest last Fall.)

Pickled ugly.

Wait for it. © Ryan Schierling

Nobody likes okra. There's no good use for it. It's unsightly, it's slimy and mucilaginous, it's a disgusting fibrous little pod that has no redeeming qualities and even less flavor. The only possible way to eat it is to batter it, deep-fry it and dip it in ranch dressing, which is (while delicious) the lowest common denominator for food. You could deep-fry poison oak leaves, dip them in ranch and they would be palatable (until your throat swelled shut).

Okay, I'll take that back. No, not the lowest common denominator part about frying vegetables and dipping them in ranch dressing, but the part about okra being completely unlovable. 

A friend with a quarter-acre garden had an okra bounty this year that was entirely unmanageable. He gave away gallon-size plastic bags of the stuff, and would have another one for you before you could even think of what to do with the last one. 

Of course, we sliced, rinsed, soaked in buttermilk, battered and fried them. We made Bhindi Masala (turns out that slime cooks away nicely). We pickled them with tons of garlic and Tabasco peppers from our garden. 

(L) Garlic and Tobasco peppers. (R) Okra, pre-pickling. © Ryan Schierling

And now, surprisingly, every time I snag a spicy, crunchy, pickled pod from one of the many, many jars in the refrigerator, I can't help but think how pretty those ugly little things are.