The Dinner Files

I can eat a staggering amount of fried okra. The grassy-meets-earthy taste of okra in general makes me think of asparagus that finally got serious and grew a pair. Since the okra in fried okra is protected from the oil by a coating, it cooks “dry,” which pretty much eliminates its famously (or infamously, depending on your feelings about the slick and the gooey) slimy texture and intensifies the grassy edge of okra’s flavor spectrum. That these bright meadow-colored pods then act as a carrier for a crispy, nutty layer of corn flour seals the deal for me.

I love the crispy. I love the salty. When crispy and salty come together I fall in love. I do not keep potato chips in the house for one reason: I would eat them all. If there were a bag of potato chips in the cupboard right now I would not be here writing this post. I would be in the kitchen opening the bag and eating potato chips one after the other until they were all gone. I wouldn’t even pretend that I wasn’t going to do it. I wouldn’t pour a few in a bowl and tell myself that was all I was going to have but then be mysteriously drawn back to re-fill the bowl again and again until the bag was empty. I know myself too well. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I know I am going to eat the whole bag. I embrace this and try to make the best of it. Every now and again I get a bag and sit down (perhaps to a new episode of Project Runway) and eat the whole thing. The moment I turn my cart up the potato chip aisle at the grocery store I know that is what is going to happen.

I recently bought a bag to serve as a snack with drinks when some friends came over. I went to the store at 9:30, the friends were coming at 6:30. The bag was empty by 12:20.

In the face of potato chips, I am powerless.

And so it is with fried okra. I can eat it like potato chips – one after another with no end in sight. The pound of okra pods I bought, tossed with two beaten eggs to coat it, drained, tossed to coat in a cup and a half of corn flour with about half a teaspoon of salt and plenty of black pepper and ground cayenne mixed in, fried in an inch of vegetable oil heated in a large heavy pot (the tall sides help minimize splattering and clean-up), and drained on a layer of paper towels was hardly enough. Especially since I had to share it. My son and I stood at the kitchen counter eating the slender crunchy green pods, waiting for my dashing husband to come home and join us for dinner.

Indeed, I had to call an end – or at least a pause – to our snacking so there would be some left for my dashing husband to try. It was an odd move in some ways since he doesn’t like fried things (whereas my son and I do, very much so) and he can take or leave okra (whereas my son and I love it). So why save him any? Especially when there were also some eggplant sticks toasting up in the oven that would be ready when he got home and which he loves?

The answer is easy: fair share.

The concept of “fair share” vis-à-vis food runs deep in my extended family. My father is one of four boys. Being raised in a house of growing male appetites and Midwestern sensibility meant they were raised portioning out every platter of chicken, every dish of candy, every bottle of soda in the house. They never experienced scarcity, there was always more than enough food for everyone, but at any given breakfast there were only so many pieces of bacon fried up. And, as we know from food memoirists and our gut sense of common wisdom, food is love. Everyone wants what’s theirs. Especially when it’s crispy salty bacon.

It becomes instinct: You know with a glance how many pieces of bacon are “yours.” One trip to the freezer for some ice and you know, without even trying, how many ice cream sandwiches have your name on them. The practice of counting people and counting food and dividing one into the other works its way deep into your brain. You do it without thinking, without trying, subconsciously, in your sleep, before you’ve even had your first cup of coffee. I know. I do it too. No one even ever had to tell me about my fair share and how to assess it; something in my Midwestern super-ego simply sopped it up like a giant sponge. We spent most weekends when I was a kid at the family cabin, with grandparents and great-grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and first cousins once-removed and second cousins and family friends around. At breakfast it was the bacon, at dinner it might be spare ribs or ears of corn. The best foodstuffs – whatever was most delicious – was silently divvied up as it arrived at the table.

A die-hard fair-share-er, like my dad, would explain it this way: Someone had done the shopping, figuring so many chicken wings or shrimp or cupcakes per person, and everyone should be allowed to have what’s theirs.

Someone who has lived for a long time with someone without the fair share perspective, who has tried in vain to explain the fair share to people not raised with it, might come to a different conclusion: Fair share is no fun.

Fair share involves a lot of self-regulation and a lot of moralizing. It goes beyond good manners. It’s more than taking a small portion that would allow everyone to have some of whatever is being served, offering more to others before taking more themselves. It assumes there is something fundamentally wrong with having more than your fair share, even when there is plenty of food for everyone. Even when someone doesn’t even care about the fried okra. It parcels out deliciousness as if it were something of objective value. It leads to ridiculous (but charming) statements like this from my Minnesotan friend, “I always take more than my fair share of candy, but I always have less than my fair share of alcohol.”

I ask you, dear reader, if she is with me and I want no candy but lots to drink, how and why is any of the candy “mine”?

Fair share assumes we all want the same amount of pie. But we don’t. What happens if someone doesn’t want their fair share of pizza? Is it still theirs? Can they allot it to a specific cause or does it go back to the platter to be divided with the rest? (Note: that is a rhetorical question. I know exactly what happens: it stays on the platter and is evenly divided among those who want it.)

Fair share makes you think small, makes you think that, at best, you might only get a dozen and a half oysters when what you want is two dozen. The whole concept is based on the assumption that people are greedy and, by its internal logic, ensures that they act in a greedy fashion. As much as you need to count the food and figure out your fair share to make sure you don’t take more than is yours (which is, in my experience, the official explanation for its existence), you also need to count and divide to make sure you get what is yours. It makes you think of seconds before you’ve taken your first bite.

I used to always eat my “fair share” of bacon, no matter how much of it my dad fried up. Then one day I ate the amount of bacon I wanted. That morning, a bright and sunny July day in northern Minnesota at the family cabin a few years ago, that amount was two strips. This left a strip sitting on the serving platter, since my dad had cooked three strips per bacon-eater and my fellow diners had all taken what was theirs. After the fried eggs were sopped up with heavily buttered toast, after the last drop of my mother’s famously strong French roast coffee was sipped from my cobalt blue ceramic mug, that strip of bacon was sitting there. Torturing my father.

“Honey, that’s yours,” he said helpfully.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m done.”

I could now tell a whole long story about me, my brother, a whole hell of a lot of oysters, sneaking said oysters onto a dinner tab we knew my dad was going to pick up, and then needing to force-feed ourselves oysters well after we’d eaten our fill. But that happened before I met my dashing husband, before he started to wean me away from thinking about my fair share of food, before he began the slow and painful work of chipping away at my Midwestern fear of scarcity with his East Coast eyes that see abundance everywhere. The thing about abundance is it makes you less grabby, less needy, less likely to eat a piece of bacon just because it’s “yours.” You know there is more bacon to be had in this life. You know that, if push came to shove, you could drive into town and buy more bacon.

“You’re not going to eat that?” he asked, as if surely I had plans for it and his own short sightedness kept him from figuring out what those might be.

“No,” I said. “I’m good. You can have it.”

He did, shaking his head with disbelief as his teeth worked their way through the browned, fatty, deeply savory meat.

The work isn’t over. I’m making progress away from the fair share mentality, but it’s like digging out a wart or scraping away a callous – it comes back despite my very best efforts.

I stopped my son from having more fried okra – partly to share our snacks as a family and partly because my sense of fair share-ness kicked in despite myself. We stopped eating for a few minutes, my dashing husband came home, we poured glasses of wine and water, and we carried the eggplant sticks and okra into the living room. As we ate we talked about eggplant and okra and what we did with ourselves that day.

My son was busy setting up Monopoly Junior as I offered up the last okra pod to anyone who wanted it. My dashing husband, his work never done, said, “No thanks, sweetie, you should have it, you love it so much.”

I have lived with this man for more than sixteen years. It is only from the resulting bevy of empirical evidence that I can say, and fully believe, that he didn’t even know how many of “his” okra I’d already eaten. He never counted them up and divided them by three. I popped that last bit in my mouth, savored the dry, grassy, almost chewy texture I love, and was finally full.

Fried Okra

Test the power of fried okra for yourself. Just remember to make enough to share.

1 pound okra

2 eggs

1 1/2 cup corn meal, corn flour, or semolina

1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more for sprinkling, if you like

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne (optional)

Vegetable or canola oil for frying

Trim the stem ends off the okra pods. Cut the pods into bite-size pieces, if you like. Set aside.

In a large bowl beat the eggs with 2 tablespoons of water. Set aside.

In a second large bowl, combine the corn meal, salt, and peppers. Set aside.

In a large heavy pot, heat at least half an inch of oil to 350 – 375 degrees (measure with a thermometer, or test it by dipping a piece of bread or the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil – it should sizzle immediately and steadily, if it doesn’t sizzle, it’s not high enough; if it bubbles up violently, it is too hot).

While the oil heats, put the okra in the egg and toss to coat the pods thoroughly and completely. Lift the okra out, letting excess egg drip off or simply drain the okra in a colander.

Working in batches of 4 or 5 pods, use one hand to put the egg-coated okra in the corn meal and the other hand to toss it to coat it completely with the corn meal mixture. Put coated okra on a plate or baking sheet. Repeat with remaining okra.

Fry okra in batches – the pods shouldn’t touch – until the coating turns brown and crispy. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to transfer cooked okra to drain on a cooling rack (my preferred method for overall crispness) or a layer of paper towels. Repeat with the remaining okra.

Serve fried okra hot, sprinkled with additional salt, if you like. A cold beer is just about perfect to wash it all down. Crisp white wine works, too.