RECIPE REVIEW - Fried Okra

When I was a kid, one of my favorite all-time foods was fried okra. When I became an adult and moved out to live on my own, I asked my mother to give me a recipe for fried okra, figuring I could veganize it. "Well," she said, "you go to the store and buy a bag of fried okra from the freezer section..." *facepalm* Oh, Mother. Since then, I've been on a quest for the perfect fried okra recipe. Most recipes I've found/been given simply call for rolling the okra in something approximating crumbly bits and frying, and you don't really end up with that solidly-coated fried yumminess that I recall so fondly from my childhood.

Fast forward to three days ago. I'm surfing the net, reading various other peoples' Vegan MoFo posts, and I find a wonderful recipe for fried okra from I Eat Trees. Oh, yeah, baby - this looks like it'll produce something good!

So, without further ado (and with a full onslaught of pictures to make up for my severe lack in my last post), here's my fried okra!

I have been looking for okra since I found the recipe. Every store I visit had it "last week" or "yesterday", but never the day I went. Today, I found it at Wheatsville!


Here's the ingredients I used. Instead of soy milk, I used coconut milk, and instead of garlic powder, I used hing (they're what I had).


Here's the flour/cornmeal mixture, vegan "buttermilk", and sliced okra -


I found the easiest way to coat the soaked okra in the flour mixture was to put it in the bowl with a tight-fitting lid and shake!


Fry, baby, fry!


The finished product!


Overall, it tasted great, though I think I'll let it fry longer next time (most of the pieces were not quite as soft as I would have liked). Also, it didn't stay warm as long as I would have liked, so I'll probably use a small deep bowl next time. But, hey - fried okra! My inner child is thanking me and doing a happy dance!