Okra Croutons

Just when you thought salad was boring, along comes inspiration:

See those crunchy things next to the chicken?  The ones that look like croutons?  They're actually fried okra slices!  This brilliant idea (which was not my idea) was the perfect twist to a weeknight chicken salad.  If you haven't tried okra, this is a great little test.  The brilliant chef took about a dozen pods, fresh from a friend's garden, and sliced them. Dipped them in half-and-half (because milk is too thin and milk+egg, which is the traditional wash, tends to make a clumpy breading) and coated them with a mixture of half flour, half cornmeal.  Fried in a small quantity of canola oil and salted, they provided the perfect crunchy, salty complement to the cool salad.

Okra is a vegetable I occasionally had as a child, and hated.  It was served up in a slimy stew and the texture was completely off-putting.  It wasn't until just a few years ago that I rediscovered this vegetable and served them pan-fried to my kids, who gobbled them up.

It's splattery when you fry them, so that's not a great step for kid-chefs, but dipping, breading and eating are!

Thanks for sharing!