How often do you find yourself trying new foods? For me, this happened earlier this week with the Jicama-Corn Salsa. I had never tried jicama before and I really enjoyed it. And now, here I am again, with another new food. As you can see by the title, today’s new food was: OKRA.

Okra is commonly used in African, Indian and Caribbean cuisines in dishes like stews and curries. It’s also eaten in the Southern USA, usually breaded and fried. It kind of looks like a cross between green beans and peppers but there is actually no relation to either of them. It is in the same family as cotton and hibiscus.

My preparation of okra was a very easy recipe from a blog called Eating Bird Food (recipe here). It was just the okra, some olive oil and spices. It was a different mixture of spices compared to what I would normally season vegetables with but I quite liked it. The seasoning was thyme, garlic powder, salt, pepper and cayenne.

They get roasted in a pretty hot oven (450°) for about 25 minutes and they came out golden brown and a little crispy. They looked so tasty, I was very excited to try them. I may have been a little heavy-handed with the cayenne pepper but this okra was delicious. The flavour was so good and they were tender.

I will definitely buy more okra and make this recipe again. What are your favourite ways to use this vegetable?