Instead of posting a recipe for today (mostly because I don’t have one …) I decided to make yam fries, as per the recipe posted here on Kyla Roma‘s wonderful blog. (If you haven’t checked it out yet, you probably should!)

I’ve never made yam fries before, but they’re freaking dee-lish (Rachael Ray whaaa?) so I figured I’d be all domestic and make them from scratch.

First, it started off with peeling the freak-of-nature giant yam (FONGY):

This guy was huge! Kyla’s recipe called for two medium yams, but the grocery store only had steroid-sized ones. They aren’t easy to peel either, with all the funny dips and bumps.

So after peeling, it was time to cut into fry-sized pieces, and I managed to do so without losing any of my fingers; Good thing too, as I was home alone and probably wouldn’t have been able to drive myself to the hospital. I put them in a bowl as I prepped the “glaze”:

The glaze consisted of olive oil, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. (Note to self: cayenne pepper, like many other peppers, will make you sneeze if anywhere near the nose.) I honestly didn’t think it was going to be enough to coat the julienned FONGY, but it did quite nicely! Here’s le glaze:

I also noticed that the syrup comes right off the tablespoon if you use it for the oil first! Yay!

It was now time to toss my fries onto my baking sheet and spread ’em out nice and even like. I thought I was going to need a bigger sheet, but it worked out okay!

So from there they went into the oven for 30 minutes, with a quick toss half way. While I was waiting for them to cook, I made the yummy sauce consisting of mayonnaise, ketchup, hot sauce, cayenne and lemon juice. It was really tasty!

My fries came out of the oven a little mushy but still AMAZING. A couple got stuck to my baking sheet where I didn’t hit it with cooking spray but there was so much for little ol’ me to me!

So final verdict! AWESOME! I may have added a little too much cayenne as it was slightly spicy (or maybe that was the powder stuck in my  nose) but over all, they were really good and EASY to make! Thanks Kyla for sharing that with everyone!

Do you like yam fries?