Indian cookbook author Shubhra Ramineni lives in Texas, where okra is a popular vegetable and is available year-round. She says that Texans are always surprised to learn that okra is also a popular vegetable in Indian cooking.

Sauteed Okra with Onions and chapati

In the South, okra is prepared in a number of ways: fried, pickled, stewed. And it is a key ingredient in gumbo, where it adds flavor and serves as a thickener.

In New England, where I live, okra is nearly as exotic as fresh curry leaves. It is rare to find it fresh in grocery stores, and even frozen is a gamble. I have sometimes found it at farmers’ markets, but not often. (This is not so surprising because okra grows best in warm climates; it is a relative of cotton, after all.) And okra is highly perishable: once picked it should be used within about three days. So I can see why Northern grocers and farmers are not inclined to take a chance on breaking into the underserved okra market. It’s a catch-22. Northerners don’t often get the chance to experiment with it because it’s hard to find, and grocers and farmers, presumably, don’t want to take a chance with okra not selling because of a lack of interest. What we need is an okra education campaign!

(more…)