I started a garden at my new place recently, and it is just now starting to yield a few things. Hopefully I’ll have a bigger crop later, but right now I have three fresh okra pods.
The only thing I can think of to do with them is to make tempura with a variety of veggies and shrimp, including the okra. My only objection to that solution is that tempura is rather fussy and I wouldn’t be planning to make it otherwise as my fridge is already full of tasty leftovers I should eat up.
Anything else I could do to use up three okra, without extensive prep?
Three? There’s not too much you could do with so few- maybe make a vegetable dish like vegetable soup or ratatouille and just cut them up and toss them in there.
This late in the year, I’d be surprised if you get much. Okra LOVES hot weather. When everything else is kind of struggling in August because of the heat here in North Texas, okra plants are growing literally an inch or two a day and you have to pick the pods daily, or they get too big and woody too fast. Of course, you have to keep them watered and fertilized.
But by now, they’ve considerably slowed down with temps in the 70s and 80s.
Oh, sorry, perhaps I should have mentioned I live on the Big Island of Hawai’i, where year-round gardening is possible. (Tropical gardening is actually far more challenging than people unfamiliar with the tropics assume, because there is no cold weather to kill off pests and diseases. But I learned a lot by working at cooperative extension service in Micronesia many years ago, so it’s a task I’m prepared to confront.)
Just an update: while I dithered, a couple more pods grew big enough to pick, so I ended up with about 1/2 cup sliced fresh okra. I made corn fritters, substituting the okra for part of the corn. Very tasty and easy.
I cook a lot of Japanese food. My favorite okra preparation is to trim the caps just a little (don’t cut them off), simmer them whole for a scant three minutes, then cool them and dress them with ponzu sauce (equal parts lemon juice and soy sauce). Top them with some fine shaved bonito flakes, if you have any. Three pods stack into a nice little “cordwood pile” and look pretty in a small Japanese dish.
I’m loving these suggestions - given that there are only 3 plants (they’re thriving but the germination rate was weirdly low) and they are just beginning to produce, I’m likely to have small quantities at peak freshness for the next couple of weeks at least. Definitely will try several of the above ideas!