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It's the only vegetable that provides the minimum daily requirement of both fuzz and slime. Its slipperiness ably serves soups, stews, salads and sandwiches. So why isn't okra more popular? True, it enjoyed a brief fling with fame as a key player in the creole craze (you can't make gumbo without it). But it hasn't inspired any books or movies, like fried green tomatoes. There are no okra posters, such as those for chili and eggplant. The three-volume Encyclopedia of Associations lists no Okra Organization, no Amalgamated Okra Producers, no International Okra Marketing Board. A national okra spokesperson? "Ed McMahon here, for the pod that needs no platitudes, the pod with panache." Nope. Ditto for throwing rotten okra at a bad act. And okra anecdotes - anything come to mind? Okra just seems destined for obscurity. True, it does bring its fair share of calls at the Clayton County office of the Georgia Extension Service, according to secretary Hazel Coker - "mostly about problems in growing it." She tells okra-culturists to regularly cut the pods from the plant, "so it will keep producing." You can get a lot of pods from just a few plants, she says, because okra produces from spring to the first frost. In most of Georgia that would be five or six months of slime time. But the acreage in Georgia, at least in the fresh-for-market segment (that doesn't include backyard gardens) is declining. In 1992, there were 2,345 acres in okra, compared to 3,052 in 1990, according to George Westberry, extension economist with the University of Georgia. Most of that is in Clemson Spineless (no jokes about the school's athletic teams, please), with the remainder Dwarf Early Green. By the way, the "spineless" means without the dense covering of small spines that make okra downy. The pods still have fuzz, just slightly less, Westberry notes. (There's no "slimeless" variety.) Those 2,345 acres put okra in the solid middle of the state's fruit and vegetable garden. It's 18th, sandwiched between sweet potatoes and kale. (Watermelon's No. 1, at 40,000 acres.) Even to get to that modest position, okra traveled a tortured trail. According to food writer Elizabeth Schneider, it's related to cotton, is native to Africa and came to these shores, via Brazil and the West Indies, with slaves. It's a good source of vitamin A and vitamin C, she adds. All this is in her book "Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: A Commonsense Guide" (Perennial, $16.95). Even though she's an okra fancier (it has, she says, "become more common than string beans in my home"), she still lists it in a volume devoted to "uncommon" vegetables, right after nopales, which are cactus pads. And surely everybody is familiar with two of her recipes: gumbo and okra stewed with tomatoes. To okraphiles like myself, those two are as common as corn bread. Though Schneider includes a dish I hadn't heard of, an okra salad from Mr. B's, the new-American-creole restaurant in New Orleans, she doesn't have a sandwich recipe. So I'll tell you how I make mine: whole wheat bread, a soft flavorful cheese such as Havarti, and peppery pickled okra, sliced lengthwise. Eat it fast, lest the okra slide out. That elusiveness was what first made okra a kitchen staple, according to cookbooks of the past century. It was a natural thickening agent, and recipes always urged boiling for an hour or two. Schneider recommends steaming, but admits that it becomes less mucilaginous cooked by that method. And I happen to like the mucilaginousness (mucilaginosity?). Not so a friend from Long Island, who had never heard of okra before he moved here a dozen years ago. After a fried okra cake from Thelma's, the downtown soul-food bastion, he was converted. Well, partially converted, beyond communion but not quite ready for confirmation. When I asked if he had tried it stewed, he looked startled. "No way," he finally said. I guess a green, fuzzy pod containing slime and tiny white seeds is just too eccentric for mainstream tastes. Which is probably what makes it a specialty here in the South, where eccentricity is not only tolerated but nurtured.
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