Oven "Fried" Okra! Mmmm...

We have a row of okra that are planted from saved seed.  Most of it is Clemson spineless, but there were evidently a a few Burgundy okra seeds mixed in there as well.  With the warm temperatures and intermittent rains, they have been loaded in blooms and you can almost watch them grow they grow so fast!  Each afternoon, I go out to the garden and lift my shirt up and use it as a 'bucket' of sorts to hold the okra I pick.  I never take the time to count them, but it is a nice little 'mess' of okra every day.

Now, we eat okra as a side dish quite often and we fix it in several different ways. We enjoy it, but I ran across a recipe that we wanted to try from the Gotreaux Farms Newsletter.  The Gotreaux's are a farm family that we've blogged about a couple years ago HERE.

We love fried okra, but fried okra makes a big mess.  Eating a bunch of fried foods is probably not the healthiest thing in the world for you.  But this recipe is for Crunchy Oven-Fried Okra (from Love Life and Good Food).  You'll need:

4 cups fresh okra
4 Tablespoons cornmeal
6 Tablespoons Panko Breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 Tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
2 eggs beaten
3-4 Tablespoons coconut oil

First I cut up the okra and preheat the oven to 425F:

Then I assemble my ingredients and combine the cornmeal, Panko breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese into a gallon-sized ziploc bag.  I also crack two nice country fresh eggs in a bowl.

Tricia put the coconut oil on a stoneware baking sheet and puts it in the oven to melt a little while we finish prepping.

A little at a time she mixes the cut up okra in the beaten egg until they are all coated well.

A little at a time, add the egg-coated okra to the ziploc bag and shake until coated evenly.

Add the coated okra to the baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, turning after about 10 minutes. At the end, turn the oven to broil to give the okra a nice golden brown color.

When the kitchen timer goes off, you can remove from the oven.  Looks nice, doesn't it?

I would say to allow to cool before eating, but honestly, quite a few get sampled right of the baking sheet before we ever serve them on our plates.  We really enjoy this recipe and think you will too!

Making Corn Maque Choux

I'm telling you Corn Maque Choux is just about the best thing you can put in your mouth.  It is so good, that I cannot even begin to describe the flavor explosion that occurs on your tastebuds.  Maque Choux is a dish that is widely eaten in Cajun country and is thought to be a mixture of Creole and Indian influences.  It is also a very easy dish to cook and doesn't take long at all to throw together.

There are many different recipes for it and just about everyone cooks it a little different, some adding bacon, some adding crawfish or shrimp...  The reason everyone's recipe is different is because people through whatever was fresh in the garden into the pot.  To add to the mystery, no one is really sure about the meaning of the name of the dish.  "Choux" is French for cabbage.  Cabbage?  Odd, I know. Suffice it to say that whatever it means, you can translate it to "DELICIOUS."

Here's how Tricia made it.  She used Emeril's Recipe, but changed it up a little by adding tomatoes. First, and most importantly, you start off with some corn - about 4 cups or 6 ears.  She thawed out some corn that we had cut off the ears of our sweet corn this Spring.  When cutting it off the ears, we were sure to scrape the cobs real good, getting all of the corn "milk" out of the cob and in the bowl.

One bag of Spring 2015 Sweet Corn we had frozen

While the corn was thawing, Tricia started two Tablespoons of butter melting in a enameled cast iron pot.  Once melted she added 1 cup of chopped onion and 1/2 cup chopped bell peppers to the butter and allowed them to cook down and get happy.

Butter, onions, and bell peppers

She walked out to the garden and picked some fresh jalapenos.  She unfortunately had to buy a tomato since our fall tomatoes aren't ready yet.

Fresh jalapenos and (unfortunately) a store-bought tomato

The jalapenos and tomatoes were chopped up quickly.

Chopped up and ready to incorporate

Then the corn, chopped jalapenos, and chopped tomatoes were added to the pot and allowed to cook for about 10 minutes, stirring and adding cayenne pepper and salt to taste.  It's coming together. We're almost there...

Getting close!

After the ten minutes have passed, simply add 1/2 cup of heavy cream to the dish, stir and serve hot.

Mmmmm!  Corn Maque Choux.  That's good stuff...

Oh my goodness.  A simple dish with great flavor.  Bring your plate on over here and serve up a big spoonful or two.  You'll be back for more, I guarantee you!

I'm not a vegetarian, but...

Doggonit if I couldn't live on fresh picked green beans and new potatoes for a good while. They both ripen at the same time and compliment each other so well as a side dish, especially if cooked with butter and a little sausage, tasso, or bacon for some extra flavoring.  Talk about good!

After we picked a bunch of them three weeks ago, we blanched and froze a nice amount of them to enjoy later and then Tricia cooked up a big pot of them for us to enjoy NOW.  The quality was good. They were tender with little to no blemishes or pest damage:

Fresh Picked Contender Green Beans with new potatoes

Here's a closer look:

Mmmmmm!

I picked another bucketful yesterday.  As the weather heats up, the quality of the green beans you harvest tends to fall off and you see smaller pods with bigger seeds and lots of pest damage.  I read that the heat causes many of the blooms to not set pods.  The blooms will just fall off.  In fact I notice that LSU doesn't recommend planting them in the months of May, June, or July.  I'll try to plant some more in either August or September.  I'd like to freeze some more and pressure can some for the winter months.  We even pickled some a couple of years ago.  They were delicious.

There's an old expression that some people use that says, "He ain't worth a hill of beans!"  That means that the person isn't worth much and they think poorly of him. I'm not sure how that saying originated, because to me, a hill of beans is worth quite a bit.  Many fine meals can be gotten off of a hill of beans!

Beans are an extraordinarily easy crop to grow and our beans were a successful crop this year because they were planted on the high side of the garden - up on hills or rows.  The excessive rains caused me to not even plant the lower portion that makes up about a quarter of the garden area, but when things finally dry up, I'm going to fix that problem by purchasing some additional top soil to raise the level of the garden higher.  My goal is to be able to grow enough to build the inventory of canned goods in our pantry and share with family, friends, and neighbors.  There's just no beating homegrown vegetables. 

One of the world's healthiest vegetables

The broccoli and cauliflower have all been harvested, along with the carrots.  We're finishing up the last of those veggies in our refrigerator crisper.  One vegetable that is just starting to come in strong is Swiss Chard.  It is one of the world's healthiest vegetable and is chock full of nutrients.  Not only is it nutritious, but it is absolutely gorgeous growing in the garden.  Just look at the pictures below!:

Swiss Chard

If you look at the leaves, they are somewhat thick, shiny, and resemble beets or spinach leaves.  This is because they are all in the same family.  The ribs are brightly colored and the veins in the leaves contrast against the green leaves.  To be honest, I don't know why they are called Swiss Chard since they didn't originate in Switzerland.  Actually, they are from the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

Sunlight filtering through the Swiss Chard leaves

You can tell I have several different varieties of chard growing.  On the far left you can see some chard that is green with white ribs.  Some has red ribs and others have pink ribs.  When the leaves are relatively small, we'll eat the whole thing, ribs and all.  When the plant gets bigger, the ribs get tougher and we'll cut them out and feed them to the cows and goat.

Here is a close-up of the pretty ribs that are all different colors from the bunch of chard I picked for supper tonight.  The leaves/stems were nice and tender and I was able to just snap them off with my hand versus using a knife.

Chard stems/ribs

I brought them inside and Tricia cooked them down in a cast iron skillet with some butter, water, and kosher salt.   The leaves and stems were delicious.

Chard - a delicious, nutritious, beautiful side dish

We've found that Swiss Chard is very similar to kale in that as you pick leaves off the plant, they will grow more and more.  You'll get more and more to harvest as the season goes on.  That's a good thing, because we'll be able to enjoy eating it for a while.