BJ Dennis’ Okra & Shrimp Purloo

“If you were to give me one final meal to eat, it would be this.” — BJ Dennis

That’s the way chef BJ Dennis winds up the headnote to his recipe for Okra & Shrimp Purloo, collected in Black Food: Stories, Art & Recipes from Across the African Diaspora — the 2021 book from which our recipe is adapted. Dennis is a Charleston, South Carolina chef with roots in the low country Gullah-Geechee community; he writes that okra purloo “speaks the language of the diaspora.”

The recipe calls specifically for Carolina Gold rice — a very special white rice that was nearly lost and was brought back a couple of decades ago. Not to be confused with the supermarket brand Carolina rice, Carolina Gold has beautiful texture and flavor. The rice comes with a terrible back story, and deep meaning for those whose enslaved forebears sowed and harvested it. “Forced labor produced Carolina Gold rice,” wrote Dennis in his headnote, “and made the Low Country rich through our ancestors’ knowledge, sweat, and tears.” We haven’t made this purloo using ordinary supermarket rice; we suspect it would not be nearly as wonderful.

READ: Captivating, versatile and rich with meaning, okra is an intrepid citizen of the world

Serves 6.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 cup diced smoked sausage (about 2 1/2- to 3 ounces)

1/2 cup finely diced yellow onion

2 tablespoons minced garlic (about 6 medium cloves)

1 tablespoon minced ginger

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 bay leaves

2 cups Carolina Gold rice

1/2 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

8 ounces okra, trimmed and sliced 1/2-inch thick

4 cups chicken or vegetable broth, warmed

2 cups peeled and deveined wild-caught American shrimp (1 1/4 pounds in their shells or 1 pound peeled), cut into thirds if they’re medium or large

4 tablespoons butter, cut into 8 pieces

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Heat the vegetable oil in a medium Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the sausage, and cook for one minute. Add the onion, and cook for a minute or two, stirring so it doesn’t color. Stir in the garlic, ginger, tomato paste and bay leaves and cook, stirring, for another minute so the garlic doesn’t brown. Add the rice, salt and 8 or 9 grinds of pepper, and mix for one minute. Stir in the okra and the broth.

2. Raise the heat to high, bring the mixture to a simmer, cover the Dutch oven and transfer it to the oven.

3. After 15 minutes, remove the pot from the oven, add the shrimp and fluff the purloo with a fork, mixing the shrimp into the rice. Cover and let it sit for 10 minutes; the residual heat will cook the shrimp through. Stir in the butter, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as necessary.

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RECIPE: Shrimp Sauté with Texas Vegetables

RECIPE: Marcus Samuelsson’s Spicy Okra

RECIPE: Charred Okra with a Little Spice

RECIPE: Shrimp, Andouille Sausage and Okra Gumbo

RECIPE: Sweet Home Café’s Spicy Pickled Okra