mea cooks: Tomato Okra Stew with Sweet Potato and Chive Fritter

At the beautiful market last Saturday, I bought a big bag of Okra.

I emailed my family to seek advice as to how to prepare this interesting African vegetable thing. I got some nice ideas, curried, breaded and fried, tomato stewed, and a soup. I decided to combine curry and tomato stew and see how it turned out.
Prepare:
-Head and tail the okra (those are such cute verbs!)
-Peel your tomatoes or get the can ready
-Prep the spices: crushed cardamon, cumin, ginger, chopped cilantro, and garlic

-Dice an onion
Cook, medium heat:
-Heat up a wok with some olive oil and sautee the onions until they're transparent - ~5 minutes
-Put in the tomatoes, spices, as well as some salt and pepper and cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes. Break up the tomatoes as you're cooking.

-After ~10 minutes, throw the okra in, cook for another 5-10 minutes until the okra is tender, but not too soft.

Tips: for me, the sauce was a bit to acidic (I'm not the biggest fan of tomato sauces sometimes) so I put in about 1 1/2 tablespoons of raw sugar, and increased the salt. I think some lemon would work well if you like sour foods, so try that. Serve with fresh cilantro and some Parmesan and enjoy with nice bread!
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I wanted more than one item for dinner, so I added this dish that a friend, Justus, and I made up one Saturday morning.
Prepare:
-Chop some sweet potatoes and some zucchini if you'd like
-Get some chives, cutting them to the length you would like the diameter of your pancake to be
Cook:
- Fill a pot with about half the amount of water needed to cover the sweet potatoes, boil until you can easily stick a fork in them

- Drain the potatoes and mash them
- Mix in some flour, milk, the zucchini, and an egg

- Mash again/mix well so it's a creamy homogeneous mixture
- Heat up a pan to medium-high with some oil
- Pour in a ladle-worth of the potato mixture
- As it's frying on one side, lay the chives on the other side, pressing them in