Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Arkansas Home Grown!

W has a coworker who lives on a farm in Hot Springs. She has brought in some yummy corn for everyone at work and last week she brought more goodies! We got scrumptious tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, and OKRA!
Do you know how to cook okra? You DO NOT boil it!! That is, unless you like eating snot.
So, in honor of our farm fresh produce, we had a good ole southern meal last weekend! W was so excited for it! LG was our handy sous chef and M wanted nothing to do with what we made! :)
To properly cook okra, well, you fry it. It's really the only way to go! Trim the ends and chop it into 1" pieces.
Beat an egg or two and coat your okra in it. Let it sit for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, get out your Arkansas farm-grown catfish and dredge it in butter, lemon juice and cajun seasonings. Then, you bake for twenty minutes so that you have SOMEthing at this meal that isn't fried!
Dredge your okra in a mixture of cornmeal, salt and pepper.

Fry it! I am not a very good frier. I usually end up with a lot of blackened fried food first. :) I was a good girl this time and used my handy dandy candy thermometer! How about that rhyming! I didn't even do that on purpose!
We also made hush puppies! We were going to make them from scratch but last minute at the store, I found a mix by Zatarain's, the maker of my Jambalaya mix that we love so dearly. So we did that and they were fabulous!!
So we enjoyed our spicy catfish, moist hush puppies, okra (then you dip it in ketchup!) and fresh sliced tomatoes! (still haven't figured out what to do with the cucumbers! :)

5 comments:

rkchughes said...

Liz- Yes there is a possibility that he will recover fully. I have been thinking about you A LOT and wishing for your professional services, not that we haven't had nice help. But still thinking about you a lot through all this. Man that Okra looks good and yes, frying is the only way!!!

Heather said...

I have always only had Okra raw, like on veggie platters. I think it's good raw but maybe I should try it fried (is that the southern way to do it solely?). As far as your cucumbers, it's hot outside so slice it into think long slices and let it soak in a pitcher of ice-water. If you've never had cucumber water, it's high time you try it! It's a refreshing change to lemon water. Now come to Dallas and cook for us!

Heather said...

My bad, I re-read your post, and you have PICKLING cucumbers. Don't put those in ice-water, just pickle them cause that's all I know what you'd do with those.

Liz said...

We might still try to serve them with ice water and vinegar because we don't know what else to do. we'll see!

Em said...

another way to do okra is to pickle it. yum!