Okra

OKRA APPREARS IN this collection steamed atop butterbeans, fried as croutons for a salad, featured in a soup, and pickled and set out as an hors d’oeuvre or even to replace the olives in a martini. Quintessentially lowcountry, okra — or gumbo — was brought directly from West Africa with the slave trade. Its pale yellow hibiscus flower brightens fields from May through November, and it grows so fast that every morning for months the grower can pick tender young pods no longer than a little finger. It is one of the most flavorful of vegetables, tasting slightly of the sea. Its mucilaginous qualities are legend, but it can be cooked so that it’s not slimy at all: