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Farmers Market: Preparing -- and respecting -- okra
Roasted Okra and Fresh Peanuts
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Okra is the Rodney Dangerfield of the vegetable world: It can't get no respect.
Double negatives aside, the pod-shaped member of the hibiscus and cotton family is known for being an acquired taste — and a Southern one, at that. Seasonal-produce cookbooks such as "Chez Panisse Vegetables" and "Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets," by California girls Alice Waters and Deborah Madison, respectively, are silent on the subject, despite okra's availability at farmers markets now through October.
But Amelia Saltsman rectifies the situation in her newly published "The Santa Monica Farmers' Market Cookbook: Seasonal Foods, Simple Recipes and Stories from the Market and Farm" ($22.95, Blenheim Press). It's the source for the recipe for the Roasted Okra and Fresh Peanuts dish shown here (roasting, she writes, helps combat some of okra's more, uh, slimy, tendencies).
And the source of the okra and peanuts themselves? Both were $3 per pound from the Fresno grower whose booth is next to Vince Ditomaso's Saturday mornings at the market in Ventura.
Also in the markets: pomegranates, $2 per pound, and organic Braeburn apples, $2.75 per pound.
Finding the markets: Camarillo: 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays, 2220 Ventura Blvd., 482-1507. Ojai: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays, 300 E. Matilija St., 698-5555. Oxnard: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays, Plaza Park at Fifth and C streets, 483-7960, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays (includes a fish market), Channel Islands Harbor, 643-6458. Simi Valley: 3 to 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Simi Valley Town Center, 643-6458. Thousand Oaks: 2 to 6:30 p.m. Thursdays, 403 W. Hillcrest Drive, 529-6266. Ventura: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays, Pacific View mall, and 8:30 a.m. to noon Saturdays, Palm and Santa Clara streets, 529-6266.
— Lisa McKinnon
Posted by justdboy on September 5, 2007 at 12:31 p.m. (Suggest removal)
MMMMMM!!!!! Catfish and Okra, rolled in cornmeal and pan fried in peanut oil. Only Mom and Grandma could do right by it.
Some things can never be replicated.
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