The movers come the weekend of March 5th. We started packing a few weeks ago, which has been nice because we can take time to appreciate the very random and curious things we’ve stashed away over the years.
Exhibit A, a page from a spiral-bound cookbook called Cookery By The Bayou, by the Episcopal Churchwomen of Christ Church in Slidell, Louisiana:
Exhibit B, a small notebook — one of many, I like notebooks — with a somewhat cryptic list:
Anyway, packing is coming along. And so is using as much of our pantry/freezer goods as possible before moving, a feat even I did not think we could manage.
Speaking of: does anyone have suggestions for what to make with lots of fine bulgur?
When we finish a package of noodles, a jar of spices, a tub of chicken broth, a bottle of the most random liqueur, we do a lil’ celebration dance. (The dance varies according to the size of the item.)
I finished the last of the lentils in a soup with chicken broth, spices, seaweed flakes, dried mushrooms, carrots, peas, and a few spoonfuls of coconut milk powder stirred in at the end. It was very easy and very delicious. (Finished bag of lentils warrants a modest fist bump.)
But the really exciting thing we made recently was tuna melts with sweet potato fries. Sounds standard, however, the sweet potatoes were purple — I think they were Stokes, though grown in PA — and featured a dense, dry flesh. Baked as fries, the outsides turned C R I S P Y while the insides stayed custardy. Delightful, truly.
There’s definitely more than one way to make crispy sweet potato fries at home: you can soak the cut potatoes in water, you can coat them in cornstarch, you can use an air-fryer, you can use a deep-fryer.
But by starting with a sweet potato with a dry, dense flesh, you can be lazy about it.
I’ve only used the purple ones so far, but I think Japanese sweet potatoes would work well, too. (Orange sweet potatoes, while undoubtedly tasty, will not turn quite as crispy.) About two medium or one large potato will fit well on a single sheet pan. Use more than one sheet pan if you need to; you want them to bake in an even, uncrowded layer.
Scrub the potato(es) clean, cut off any nasty bits, then slice into your ideal fry shape. (Braeden cut them on the thicker side, as seen above.)
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees and stick your unlined sheet pan in to preheat, too. In a bowl, toss the sweet potatoes with a tablespoon or so of oil, plus salt and your seasoning of choice. (I used an Australian seasoning blend randomly procured from a food stylist — such glamour!)
Pull out your sheet pan, dump the seasoned potatoes onto it — they’ll sizzle in a very pleasing way — and shake the pan to make an even layer of fries. Bake for about 20 minutes, use a spatula to flip the fries over as best as you can, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes more, or until they’re as crispy as you like. (If you cut your potatoes into smaller pieces, this will go faster.)
That’s it!
I keep forgetting to include a few reading things! Let me know your thoughts on any of the below, if you read/end up reading them?
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina. Loved it: multiple generations of a family confronting and learning about their past, and also, magic!
George Saunders’ “My Writing Education: A Timeline.” I already thought George Saunders is a delightful person; this confirmed it.
Dayna Evans’ “Flour Trip — One woman’s journey into the heart of grain and how our flour is made.” If you’ve baked with flour from a small mill and wondered what makes it so special (and pricey compared to grocery store flour), this is for you. So much here.
And ahead of tomorrow, loved this piece on Cincinnati chili from the Midwesterner, mostly because I love to see someone being dismissive of people who are, themselves, dismissive. One of many great lines from the article:
If you ask me, they hate that their cities don’t have dishes that are so loved. It’s all about the love. We love it so much that we don't care what people say about it. We will defend it to our dying day. So, I say it's really chili envy. Not hate, envy.
We’re making a batch of our own, but with some sort of legume (or maybe tempeh?) instead of beef. But first, we’ll make queso — as in the dip made with processed cheese — so we can finally polish off the last of the American cheese that a fellow farmers market worker passed on to us. (Can we all pause to appreciate that we acquired a block of American cheese while at a FARMERS MARKET? Hilarious.)
Next week’s recipe will be neither of those, though. I’ve somehow made a lot of brownies lately. It turns out brownies are a good way to use up random ingredients like sweetened condensed milk, hot chocolate mix, beet powder, freeze-dried blueberries, and seaweed (yes, all at once; no, it wasn’t gross). The next brownie iteration will feature a white chocolate + rose swirl. Think fudgy thoughts, please.
Thanks for reading! Catch you on the flip side.