This delicious recipe comes from central India (courtesy of Amrita) and is called Masala Bhindi.
You can get really good quality Okra easily in the UK, or you can grow your own, but it's not a well known vegetable for the English. Whenever I go to India I switch to eating mainly vegetarian food, and that's where I was served this lovely dish, which could be a solo main course, or just one of several dishes forming a meal.
I made a one-portion batch at home tonight, and ate it with a thick slice of my wife's home-made parmesan-and-sundried-tomato bread and plenty of english butter.
Preparation time is about 10 minutes, and cooking time about 15 minutes. Cost is less than 50p per serving.
You need, for two servings, the following ingredients:
Okra - choose young smaller pods if possible, 10cm long or less - 250g (half a pound)
1 tblsp Sunflower oil
1/2 tsp Mustard seed
1/2 tsp Cumin seed
Garlic - 6 pieces (cloves)
Fresh root Ginger - about 20g (say one 3cm piece)
1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper (red chili powder)
1 tsp Coriander powder
generous pinch of Turmeric
a pinch of salt to season
one medium or two small ripe Tomatoes
N.B. The photo shows the ingredients for 1 person, but see lower down about the tomato.
Start off by sharpening your kitchen knife - I use a special sharpener produced in Switzerland, with Aegis-supplied functional parts (the cutting edge of tungsten carbide, and honing stone of alumina ceramic), to get a really good edge on all my knives. There it is - centre of the picture!
Cut the Okra into pieces about an inch and a half long, and remove the pod ends. Chop the ginger as finely as you can, but keep the garlic in rough-chopped pieces. Chop the tomato into pretty small pieces too.
I put the mustard seed and cumin seed into a mortar and carefully crushed them to split the seeds. I'm not sure if I should maybe have left these spices whole, but I thought it might have been a bit "gritty" if I had done that. Anyway, it's a wonderful smell when you grind them a bit, particularly the Cumin!
Heat the oil to medium hot in a frying pan. Add the Cumin and Mustard seeds and stir for a few seconds while they fizz. Then add the ginger and garlic and cook for one minute.
Now add all the Okra and fry the mixture together for 10 minutes on a low heat, covering the pan so the Okra gets well heated through without burning, and shaking/stirring regularly to get it coated with the oil and spices.
Once the Okra is cooked (it goes tender and shrinks a bit), sprinkle on the Chili powder, the Coriander and add a pinch of salt to taste. Give this a good shake or stir to distribute it uniformly, and then add all the chopped tomatoes.
A quick whizz round the pan to pick up any bits of garlic that are sticking to the sides, and its done. Turn off the heat and serve immediately.
I think my batch may have had rather too much tomato in it, in proportion to the Okra, but it was still really good. The home-grown garlic pieces fried really crisp and tasty, and the chili didn't overwhelm the other spices at all.
Send me an e-mail if you make it and find a useful variation on the ingredients or method!
This delicious recipe comes from central India (courtesy of Amrita) and is called Masala Bhindi. 
