Dry-Fried Masala Okra

I wanted to recreate the okra dish at Sultan Restaurant in San Francisco, so I posted on chowhound to get some advice about it. Here's a link to my post:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/586773

Here's the recipe I made. It came out great. I think I will continue to experiment with different spice combinations, but this was a good start for sure.

1/2 lb okra (2 cups) - cut diagonally into bite-sized pieces
3 T veg oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 c finely chopped onion
1 T minced garlic
1 T minced ginger
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 small jalapeno chile
sprinkle of fried garlic

Make sure that the okra is completely dry before cooking - this means that if you need to wash it, you have to do that way ahead of time and then dry it on paper towels. I just decided not to wash mine (yum. dirt.)

In a wok, heat oil on medium, add mustard seeds until they start popping, and then add the turmeric, cumin, and coriander. Stir the spices into the oil for a minute, then add onions, ginger, and garlic. Stir fry these together until onions get soft...the mixture will also start to turn brown and a bit crispy, which is good.

Once onions are mostly cooked, add the okra, garam masala and the jalapeno. Cook until the okra are tender (I did a combination of covered and uncovered wok). Make sure to minimize the stirring as much as possible so the okra doesn't get gummy, but stir enough so that the okra doesn't burn. The cooking will take about 7 minutes.

Turn off heat, and add salt (1/2 tsp made it quite salty - this can be toned down a bit if you prefer less salty). I think it's important to add salt at the end because adding it too early will extract water, which will make it gummy.

Done! I served the okra w/ some homemade daal, rice and mango chutney. Yum