Tuesday, August 12, 2008

First (home cooked) meal in Lubbock

As most of you know, I have recently moved to Lubbock, Texas. Because my stuff came this weekend, I am now able to cook again. I am still very limited in what I can do, because I have not unpacked all my stuff yet (let alone organized it) and because my stove doesn't work (new one comes on Thursday). But, I was still able to cook today using stuff I packed (grill and toaster oven). Today's recipe is oven-baked sweet potato "fries".

First, the cast of characters... We have a sweet potato (1-2 people per sweet potato, depending on appetite and potato size), kosher salt, cumin, cayenne pepper, olive oil, and black pepper (not pictured). I chose this particular combination of spices because I had unpacked them (I've since unpacked the rest of my spices) and because I sometimes like to combine sweet and spicy.


Basically, I cut the sweet potato into wedges and tossed it with olive oil (enough to coat), a decent amount of kosher salt, about a half teaspoon of cumin and black pepper, and a quarter teaspoon (I think) of cayenne pepper. I then placed them in a single layer on a cookie sheet and baked them at 450° for 25-minutes, turning once. They were not as crispy as fried fries, but were quite good nonetheless. We have made these before (using cinnamon, salt, and honey as flavoring) and baked them at a lower temperature and gotten really soggy fries, so I think the higher temperature was key.

I served these fries with a chicken breast marinated in zesty Italian salad dressing and grilled.


Also, there's a pint of a wheat beer that I got from a local microbrewery that helped complete this summertime feast.

PS - now that Z is no longer in the same state as I am, the quality of my pictures has dramatically decreased. This is a combination of having to use a point and shoot camera instead of the DSLR that she's been teaching us all how to use and not having her awesome photography and processing skills.

3 comments:

Maylily18 said...

i too feel dwarfed by her photographical gift. don't worry, we can have sucky pictures together. :) (not that yours suck, but you know what i mean)

Jenny said...

i love sweet potato fries!! the ones at tiptop were especially good, did you ever have them? glad to see you're settling in and all your stuff has arrived. yes, z has us all inspired to be better photographers...so jealous...

zarafa said...

hey, i didn't know i had some fan club activity going on here... buy an expensive camera. it helps :)