I found the recipe for tonight's dinner on Food.com, while searching for something to do with the bag of frozen okra that has been sitting in my freezer for far too long. It was one of those purchases that was made with no clear intention behind it, simply that I was in the freezer section near the vegetables and I thought I'd give okra a try. I have had okra before, and I liked it, so it didn't uniquely qualify for this phase of the resolution or the last. I just figured there had to be some dish with okra in it that I needed to discover. As it turns out, I was right.
According to the author of this particular recipe (and I will paraphrase to save you some grammatical and spelling errors), this recipe originates in Charleston, where Limpin' Susan is the wife of Hoppin' John, which is a dish made with black-eyed peas and rice, traditionally eaten on New Year's Day. Apparently, Limpin' Susan likes okra and shrimp. So she put them in with some rice, onions, bell pepper, and garlic, and made a lovely dish of her own.
As you might recall, it wasn't too long ago that shrimp scared the living daylights out of me. But in this dish, though Ian commented that it was the most straightforward shrimp flavor he'd tasted in any of the shrimp dishes I've prepared, it was delicious. The okra, the peppers, the rice--it all complemented the shrimp nicely. I managed to season it nicely, and the cayenne I threw in (about three dashes) didn't raise the heat level too high.
And on top of that, I made my very first batch of sweet tea, which accompanied the meal nicely. One day, I'll have to visit the south in person.
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