Like any hungry New York Times reader, each Wednesday your Quarter-Life Cooks skip straight through the hard news to the Dining Section. Now while Mark Bittman may have bigger fish to fry, we figured we’d look the Wednesday foodies square in the face and establish our own weekly column. Because of the general Internet food overload, our Wednesday posts will cut straight to the heart of the matter—that is, the recipe.
Check back each week for a great new recipe that you can read, make, eat, and still have time leftover to plunge, if you must, back into the wordy depths of the Times.
Read on for our first Recipe Flash!
**Recipe**
Sweet Potato Fries
Makes as many as you’d like!
This is an essential recipe, if you can call it a recipe. It makes, with the minimal effort of cutting and turning on an oven, delicious, crispy, and sweet french fries. Bake them for yourself with that one mini sweet potato growing limp on your counter (is that just me?), for a crowd to go along with a barbecue, a picnic (yes, they’re even good cold), or for any casual meal in need of more carbs.
Ingredients
Sweet potatoes—about half a large potato per person eating
Olive oil—about 1 tablespoon per potato
Coarse salt
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Cut the sweet potatoes into fries: about 1/3″ by 4″. Toss with olive oil and arrange on a baking sheet in one layer or as close to one layer as you can get. Bake for 1 hour, tossing occasionally with a heat-proof spatula. When the fries are browned, crispy, and soft in the inside remove from the oven, sprinkle with salt, and serve. Ketchup and honey mustard make excellent accompaniments.
