Okra with Poppy and Mustard Seed

One of the pleasures of cooking in another kitchen, especially a kitchen far away from home, is getting acquainted with different tools: pots, utensils, and so on. In Bengal a lot was very new to us, right down to the basic kitchen knife.

This dish shows off the practical simplicity of a Bengali mortar and pestle, though other tools can be substituted. The mortar is a flat block of stone, with a design chiseled into it. The pestle is a heavy lumpy cylinder, also of stone, that is ro