Charles De Gaulle is once said to have exclaimed, "How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?" I once heard a Gujarati lady express an Indian equivalent of this: "Can you imagine a family where every man has his bhindi made differently?" she asked. Her husband, two sons, father-in-law and brother-in-law all loved bhindi, but only when made in different ways for each. One wanted short rounds, another medium cylinders, a third slanted slices, a fourth kept whole but slit and stuffed and I can't remember the last.
That is testimony to how much Indians love okra or bhindi, and also to the number of ways we cook it. Whether cooked Sindhi-style in kadhi, on eggs in Parsi bheeda-pe-eeda, dryfried with potatoes, braised with tomatoes and onions, stuffed with aamchur, doused in a raita, cooked with mustard paste or tamarind, fried till crisp and so many other ways, bhindi is such a firm favourite here that it can be surprising to learn that it may not be Indian in its origin and that we probably aren't the most okra-obsessed people in the world.
The genus Abelmoschus has several cultivated species, but the one that crossed the Atlantic sometime in the sixteenth century was Abelmoschus esculentum. Related to cotton and other mallow family plants, okra is an ancient vegetable that originated in southernEthiopia in far antiquity.
Why is it called ladies finger?
It is generally longish, slim, light green in color, slightly bent, and has a tapering end. It is possible that this name was given as it resembled the finger of a woman (lady). This vegetable is called Okra in the USA.
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