LADY'S FINGERS

In my last entry, I wrote about brinjals.  This time it's the Lady's Fingers turn.  Interestingly, a friend who wanted to teach her  young children about growing vegetables and plants (smart mum!) planted two varieties for a start – brinjals and lady’s fingers.  It turned out she was also included in the learning program – she had never known that while the brinjal fruit grow down  the lady’s fingers grow up!

I love eating lady’s fingers when they’re simply boiled until soft.  The secret is in the sauce that you eat them with.  My son has learned to make the best sauce I’ve ever tasted, and it consists of frying red onions (shallots) and garlic until they’re perfectly done (crispy but not burnt) adding oyster sauce and sweet soya sauce until they thicken.  The combination is poured over the boiled lady’s fingers.  Simply delicious.  My husband’s favourite is fried diced lady’s fingers with dried prawns and chillies.   All good reasons to plant our own!

In Professor Ong Hean Chooi’s Vegetable book, he says that the seeds can be a replacement for coffee (!)  While he doesn’t give details, I guess he means treating the matured seeds much as the real coffee beans, which is frying them until they turn dark and then grinding them.  The fruit is high in calcium. 

I once received an email saying that Lady’s fingers have been found to be very effective for curing diabetes.  The vegetable is sliced and put into a mug and left overnight.  The mucus that comes from the vegetable will ooze out into the water.  The next morning, throw out the vegetable (or cook it!) and just drink the jelly-like residue.  No particular smell or offending taste.  I've done that a few times, but left them in the mug only for a few hours in the day time, not overnight.  I can't say if it works or not because thankfully,  I don't have diabetes, but I find the jelly-like drink pleasant and there's no harm in it anyway.   In fact, it may help to keep my skin soft, because in the Vegetable book, Professor Ong says that the mucus is good for cooling and softening the skin.  

Great stuff.  Lady's fingers, bendi, kacang lendir (Abelmoschus Esculentus (L) Moech)