Sweet Potato Fries - With Oregano!

At the farmer's market the other day, S and I got a boatload of vegetables. A whole bucket of peppers, a gigantic pile of parsnips, baskets of brussel sprouts, snap peas and shitaki mushrooms. Huge paper bags of crimini and portabello mushrooms, several squash (remember my salute to squash?) and multiple containers of strawberries and blackberries. And - as if I could forget - a bushel of sweet potatoes. 

So naturally, we decided to make some delightful, epic, sweet potato fries. I am a huge fan of sweet potato fries. A few years ago, I experimented with different recipes, and a lot of sweet potatoes sacrificed themselves in the pursuit of culinary greatness.

Start with a few sweet potatoes. They're pretty large, so they make a lot of fries, but the fries are really tasty so you might want to make a bunch. In a stroke of remarkable genius (considering what an idiot I am most of the time) I decided to make quite a large batch, and freeze them on cookie sheets so we can have hot and delicious sweet potato fries whenever we like.

Thoroughly scrub the sweet potatoes. We got ours at a local farmer's market, and they still had some really authentic clods of dirt that just screamed "I was recently dug out of the earth by an actual farmer!" It's amazing I got any cooking done at all, what with all the screaming. 

                

Like I said, you start with a sweet potato. Or two.

Baked Sweet Potato Fries Recipe

Ingredients:

1-2 Sweet Potatoes

4-5 Tbsp Olive Oil

1/3 Cup of Cornstarch (flour works well too)

1 Tbsp Black Pepper

3 Tbsp Garlic Powder

2 Tbsp Dried Oregano

2 Tbsp Sea Salt

1. Slice sweet potatoes into wedges that are very even in size - the size isn't very important, but when they are cooking the uneven ones tend to burn. 

2. Toss the sweet potatoes into a bowl, and add olive oil. Stir to coat. Add more olive oil if necessary for all of the wedges to be evenly coated. 

3. Add cornstarch. Flour works just fine too, but cornstarch gives you crispier results. Stir to coat evenly. Add more if necessary. 

4. Add spices, adjust amounts according to personal taste. I love adding some chili powder, or cayenne powder, just to be crazy exciting. 

5. Pre-heat oven to 400F. Lightly grease pan, and spread the sweet potato pieces out in a single layer. Try not to overlap them - they will only get mushy. However, they shrink considerably while cooking, so feel free to cozy them up close to each other. 

6. Bake for about 15 minutes, flip, and continue baking for about 5-10 minutes (or longer, if you have thicker wedges). 

7. Enjoy with some sour cream (I mixed the sour cream with a teaspoon of chili powder, just to be exciting). 

Frankly I'm shocked these lasted long enough for me to take photos. S was glaring at me the entire time. I don't think he appreciated me posing the fries. In fact, he attempted to make fun of me - until I threatened to withhold sweet potato fries. And then he stopped, because then he was gobbling sweet potato fries as I frantically tried to take photos.