Ingredient: Dried Okra (with Recipe for Armenian Okra & Meat in Tangy Tomato Sauce)

My best vacations involve ferreting out local food markets, from tiny one-room shops to outdoor city blocks sprawling with food vendors. My mind happily races with recipe ideas when I gaze upon abundant spices, regional cheeses, glistening seafood, and seasonally fresh fruits and vegetables.

I'm addicted to unusual ingredients. If an herb, spice, or other comestible is one I’ve never heard of, I buy it immediately. Figuring out how to use oddball items helps me extend our always too short vacations.

Yesterday I hit the ingredient jackpot, and didn’t have to leave Anchorage to do it.

While sharing morning coffee with my friends Marie and Ankine, our conversation turned to the ingredients we bring home from our travels because they aren’t available in Alaska. Marie included dried okra in the list of foods that fill her luggage.

Dried okra? My ears perked up. I’d never heard of dried okra, and was full of questions. Where did the dried okra come from? How did Marie use it? How is the okra dried?

Marie opened the refrigerator and removed a jar of the tiniest okra I had ever seen. The 1” long baby okra were strung on cotton string like a necklace and dried until hard. The okra came from Turkey, via a California speciality market.

Every year I spend the end of summer in a Greek farming village. It's a time of abundance and we eat what's in season, which includes okra. I’ve prepared lots of okra, but they were the size of my little finger. Cleaning normal size okra is time-consuming; cleaning okra so much smaller seemed as if it would be interminable. I marveled at how much work went into preparing the string of baby okra Marie was holding.

In Marie’s native Lebanon, people prefer tiny okra and pick it when it’s no bigger than the end of a woman’s little finger. When she lived there, Marie bought big bags of okra in season. She strung the little okra together, hung them to dry, and used the summer morsels to enhance winter meals. This is not possible in Alaska where okra comes from the supermarket and is often only available frozen.

Marie insisted on giving me a string of baby okra, weighing it out precisely at 50 grams (1/8 pound), the right amount to make dinner for two. She also gave me an Armenian recipe for cooking the dried okra.

To prepare it for use, dried okra is first boiled in water with lemon and onion until it is half cooked. At this point, it can be used just like fresh okra.

When I made Marie’s recipe, I gained a new appreciation for how good okra can be. Whether it was because the okra was picked so small, or a result of drying it, the okra in the finished dish wasn’t the slightest bit slimy. Drying the okra concentrated its unique flavor, which Marie’s recipe pairs with a meaty tomato sauce and tangy lemon juice.

I happily followed Marie’s advice to serve her okra stew with rice pilaf. The rice added yet another dimension to the stew; the sweetness of the rice was a welcome counterpoint to the lemon-infused meat and vegetables.

Armenian Okra and Meat in Tangy Tomato Sauce
Serves 2
The recipe can easily be made in larger quantities to serve more people.

1/8 pound dried okra
1/2 medium onion, cut into chunks
1/2 lemon, cut into slices
2-3 Tbsp. butter
1 cup minced onion
Salt
Freshly ground white pepper
1 tsp. minced fresh garlic
1/2 pound diced lamb or beef
2-3 cups beef stock
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
Salt
White pepper
1 lemon, juiced
Lemon wedges

Place the dried okra in a pan with the chunked onion, lemon juice, and plenty of water. Bring the water to a boil and cook 15 minutes or until the dried okra is half cooked. Drain in a colander and toss the okra with 1/2 cup lemon juice. Let cool, discard the cooked onion and lemon slices, and remove the string.

Sauté the minced onions and garlic, lightly seasoned with salt and ground white pepper, in butter until they soften and start to turn golden. Add the meat and sauté, stirring frequently, until the meat has browned. Add the tomato paste and 2 cups stock, bring the liquid to a boil, turn down the heat, cover the pot, and cook until the sauce thickens and the flavors blend, about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding more stock if the sauce gets too thick. Remove the cover, taste, and correct the seasoning for salt and white pepper. Add the okra, and cook 10-15 minutes, or just until the okra is fully done. Stir in the remaining 1/2 cup lemon juice

Garnish with lemon wedges, and serve with rice pilaf on the side.

Buying Dried Okra: In the United States, you are unlikely to find a local source for dried okra unless you live in New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Order dried okra from Kalustyan's, a specialty food store in New York City.

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Dried Okra Trivia: The first Armenian cookbook in the United States (The Oriental Cook Book; Wholesome, Dainty, and Economical Dishes of the Orient, Especially Adapted to American Tastes and Methods of Preparation), was written by Ardashes Hagop Keoleian in 1913. Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project, Michigan State University’s effort to create an online collection of influential early American cookbooks, has a digital copy of the book available for downloading.

About okra, Keoleian says: “The flavor is not agreeable to most people at first, but it is one of the best vegetables known for food. It is used fresh, also sold strung-on-threads in dried condition. It is put up in cans, too. A delicious food, especially good for invalids. The price of dried okra is 40 cents per pound.”

Dried okra was as hard to find in 1913 America as it is now, so the author kindly told his readers that dried okra "may be had, on short notice, by writing to the author, A.H. Keoleian, care of the Publishers, New York City. All orders should accompany with an additional sum of 10 per cent of the value of the order, for packing purposes, etc.”