Take advantage of okra’s slime to make pillowy Summer Vegetable Scallion Pancakes

If the South had a mascot, it would be okra. You love, hate or have an unfounded fear of okra — and the same is true of the South.

There’s no vegetable more polarizing than this poor little pod. And it’s only one part of okra that tends to bother people: the slimy seeds. Now I seek okra out. I want to cook with it. I want to change people’s minds about it. I’m not going to print myself an “I Love Okra” T-shirt or name my next child after it, but I understand and respect it just as much as I do every other vegetable.

These fritters from my cookbook “Deep Run Roots” capitalize on okra’s slime like nothing else. They’re sort of a cross between a scallion pancake and fried okra, and their pillowy texture and vegetal flavor, coupled with the sweet pop of corn, is pleasing and addictive.

Choose large mature pods, and use only their fat midsections. The swollen seeds hiding in there will actually do a lot to hold the fritter batter together. I like to eat these fritters right out of the frying pan over stewed tomatoes, but they’re also nice at room temperature as a scoop for hummus.

Serves 4

1 cup okra, caps and tips removed, midsections minced

½ cup fresh corn, cut off the cob

¼ cup squash or zucchini, grated on a box grater or in a food processor

3 tablespoons minced scallion

1 teaspoon salt, divided

2 tablespoons cornmeal

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons buttermilk

1 egg

¼ teaspoon hot sauce

¼ to ⅓ cup vegetable oil

Preheat your oven to 200°F. In a medium bowl, stir together the minced okra, corn, squash, scallion, and ½ teaspoon of the salt. Let that sit for about 5 minutes. The salt will leach out the moisture in the squash. That moisture will activate the slime in the okra and bring the veggies together in kind of a gooey-looking mass.

Stir in the cornmeal and flour to incorporate. Whisk together the buttermilk, egg and hot sauce, and stir it into the dry, slimy mass. Mix this up a few times and let it sit at least 3 minutes and up to 1 hour before you get ready to cook the fritters.

In a 10- to 12-inch skillet or cast-iron pan, add the oil over medium heat. If you want larger fritters, spoon about 2 tablespoons of the batter into the preheated oil and press down on each dollop to flatten it slightly. The fritters should be about ¼ inch thick. If you’d like smaller fritters, start with 1 tablespoon of batter.

Carefully continue dropping dollops of batter into the hot oil, making sure the fritters don’t touch. Cook the fritters over medium heat on each side till they are chestnut-colored in some spots and golden in others. Transfer the fritters to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain and season them while hot with the remaining salt. Keep them warm in your oven while you fry the next batch.

Serve warm.

Vivian Howard is the chef and owner of the acclaimed Chef and the Farmer restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina. The first woman since Julia Child to win a Peabody Award for a cooking program, she co-created and stars in the PBS series “A Chef’s Life.”

Excerpted from “Deep Run Roots” by Vivian Howard. Copyright (copyright) 2016 by Vivian Howard. Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

This image released by Voracious shows the cookbook “Deep Run Roots” by Vivian Howard. (Rex Miller/Voracious via AP)

This image released by Voracious shows a recipe for summer vegetable scallion pancakes from the cookbook “Deep Run Roots” by Vivian Howard. (Rex Miller/Voracious via AP)

RWAMPARA, Congo (AP) — Dozens of people working at an Ebola virus treatment center in northeast Congo went on strike Monday over unpaid salaries and bonuses.

Congo has been battling since May a new wave of the virus, named by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention last week as the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever recorded on the continent.

The striking staff at Rwampara General Hospital in Ituri province includes epidemiologists, case investigators, drivers and gravediggers who say they have not been paid by the Congolese authorities. The hospital was shuttered by protesting staff, who blocked the road leading to the medical facility.

Some of the center's health workers and those working on the ground began striking last week, accusing authorities of failing to pay their wages since the outbreak began.

“We don’t know how it is possible to not have been paid for two months,” Bahati Claude, a health worker at the center, which is the largest in the Rwampara health zone, told The Associated Press. “We don’t want to give up the job.”

The Congolese authorities declared a new Ebola outbreak on May 15, after the disease had been transmitting for weeks without official detection, according to the World Health Organization. The latest outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved vaccine or treatment.

During a visit to Ituri last week, the Congolese health minister, Roger Kamba, said the government is verifying a list of those working to control the outbreak, as some unrelated names have been added to the payroll.

“We must ensure that these payments reach the right people,” Kamba said. “We have faced a few challenges, notably changes to the lists, which have led to complaints from people saying they are not being paid even though they are working. We have the means to sort this out.”

There are 1,926 confirmed cases so far in the country, including 702 deaths, according to Congolese authorities.

Meanwhile, the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted Monday on X that a second U.S. citizen, a humanitarian worker in eastern Congo who had contracted Ebola, was transferred to Germany. The first American to test positive for the virus was a doctor working in Congo during the early weeks of the outbreak.

Workers at an Ebola treatment center go on strike over unpaid salaries and bonuses at Rwampara General Hospital, in Ituri, northeastern Congo, Monday, July 13, 2026, (AP Photo/Prosper Heri Ngorora)

Workers at an Ebola treatment center go on strike over unpaid salaries and bonuses at Rwampara General Hospital, in Ituri, northeastern Congo, Monday, July 13, 2026, (AP Photo/Prosper Heri Ngorora)

FILE - A health worker prepares a patient's blood sample for testing at Bunia General Hospital in Bunia, Congo, Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa, File)