Bring okra home in fritters and with chicken

Among the culinary divides (vegetarians v. carnivores, cilantro lovers v. cilantro haters, oyster slurpers v. oyster abstainers), there is a gulf created by okra. People either love it or hate it, usually based on whether they consider the texture to be "gummy" (a positive, relatively speaking) or "slimy" (a definite negative). But a lot of folks - especially Northerners - haven't ever tried okra. They are missing out on, if nothing else, an opportunity to adamantly embrace or reject a controversial food.

In the South, okra is a staple, especially in foods like gumbo. Etymologies tell us that the English word "okra" in fact gets its name from an Angolan Bantu word, "ki ngombo," which was adopted by Portuguese slave traders as "quingombo" and shortened by slaves in the West Indies to "gombo" or "gumbo." Thus we have gumbo, which is typically thickened by okra.

Okra's popularity in the South is legendary. It lead humorist Roy Blount to write a "Song to Okra":

"Okra's green/goes down with ease/

Forget cuisine/say 'okra please!'"

Blount ends with this immortal couplet:

"You can have strip pokra/

Give me a nice girl and a dish of okra."

Most recipes tell you that to address the texture issue, you should not slice the okra. But chef Curtis Stone, in "Relaxed Cooking with Curtis Stone" (2009 Clarkson Potter), says that most folks' problem with okra comes from overcooking. He compares it to asparagus - delicately flavored when well cooked and miserable when overdone. In the brightly spiced stew here, he adds the okra only for the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Likewise, the okra fritters below are just cooked for a few minutes. As a Southern friend said of this recipe: "It's got buttermilk. It's got cornmeal. It's got okra. What's not to like?"

• Marialisa Calta is the author of "Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family" (2005 Perigee, 2005). More at marialisacalta.com.