Recipes

Blistered Okra with Basil Sauce

Chef Katsuji Tanabe dishes out traditional Mexican dishes with Japanese and North Carolina twists

Photo: Courtesy of a’Verde

“In Mexico, we don’t eat okra,” says Katsuji Tanabe, the Mexico City-raised chef of the recently opened a’Verde Cocina + Tequila Bar in Cary, North Carolina. “But we do have nopales—a cactus that’s very slimy and has always reminded me of okra.” After a career working at restaurants in L.A., Chicago, and Las Vegas, Tanabe settled in North Carolina, and he’s taking full advantage of the locale. “It’s so cool to be in Cary and work with local produce like this,” he says. “In Chicago and L.A., you can get everything at any time of the year, but it’s not always local and it’s not always the best. Now in the South, it makes me so happy to use things like sweet potatoes and okra.” 

He cooks that okra in the tradition of nopales, roasting them in a sizzling cast iron pan alongside shallots and garlic. But like many of his dishes, the okra reflects his childhood growing up with a Mexican mother and a Japanese father. “My family would put soy sauce and lime juice on all our vegetables, which I didn’t realize until later was a little different than other Mexican households,” he says. “For this dish, I use tamari, a gluten free soy sauce, but you can use regular soy sauce, too.”

The key, Tanabe says, is to sauté the okra fast, adding in the oil, shallots, and garlic midway through so they don’t burn in the hot pan. “It’s a quick, aggressive, sauté. I’m not cooking this one hundred percent,” Tanabe says. “Food should not be perfect. The imperfections are what make it special.”


Ingredients

  • a’Verde’s Blistered North Carolina Okra (Yield: 4 servings)

  • For the basil sauce:

    • 3 cloves garlic

    • ½ tbsp. fish sauce

    • ¼ cup lime juice, plus more for garnish

    • 20 basil leaves, plus a few more for garnish

    • 1 tsp. Dijon mustard

    • ½ bunch flat-leaf parsley

    • 3 tbsp. tamari or soy sauce

    • 1 whole Serrano pepper

    • 1 cup light olive oil

  • For the okra:

    • 1 lb. fresh okra, cut in half lengthwise

    • 2 tbsp. olive oil

    • 1 tsp. garlic, chopped

    • 2 tsp. shallots, sliced

    • 1 tsp. salt

    • A few Fresno peppers, sliced for garnish


Preparation

  1. To make the sauce, in a blender, combine garlic, fish sauce, lime juice, basil, mustard, parsley, tamari, and Serrano pepper. Blend, then slowly add the olive oil to emulsify. Set aside and let cool.

  2. Get a cast iron skillet very hot, then add okra. Seconds later, add oil. Sauté for 30 seconds, then add the garlic and shallots and continue cooking for about a minute longer. Add salt. Remove from heat and place on serving dish. Garnish with basil sauce, fresh basil leaves, sliced Fresno peppers, and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.


Caroline Sanders Clements is the associate editor at Garden & Gun and oversees the magazine’s annual Made in the South Awards. Since joining G&G’s editorial team in 2017, the Athens, Georgia, native has written and edited stories about artists, architects, historians, musicians, tomato farmers, James Beard Award winners, and one mixed martial artist. She lives in North Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Sam, and dog, Bucket.