Sweet Potato Fries with Spicy Garlic Aoli

I made this recipe to bring to Thanksgiving at my Dad's last year. My nieces and nephews (all under the age of 12 and averse to veggies) loved these, and the aoli elevated the dish so that all the adults were impressed with my "culinary expertise." My family asked me to make these again this year, so I figured I'd share the recipe. At home, I'll usually pair these with a black bean burger or my quinoa burgers (and put the aoli on top of the burgers too)!

SWEET POTATO FRIES WITH SPICY GARLIC AOLI

Ingredients:

Fries:
- 1 large sweet potato, peeled (don't have to peel them, but it makes them more crispy if you do. Also, a good rule of thumb is to ration about 1 sweet potato per person if you're cooking for more than just yourself or a friend).
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Salt, pepper, paprika, and cinnamon to taste

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
While you wait for it to heat up, peel and cut your sweet potato into 1/2" thick sticks. Try to keep really pointy ends from being there, as they burn easily.
In a ziploc bag, put in your olive oil and spices.
Throw your sweet potatoes in and give the bag a good shake so that everything covers the sweet potato (this step is especially fun if you're making this with a kid as your helper. Put on some music and shake around!).
Put your potatoes spread evenly on a baking sheet with tin foil over it.
Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, turning your fries over in the middle (at 10 or 15 minute mark - different ovens will take different times to make the fries crispy). When your fries begin to brown, it's time to take them out.
Dry your fries on a paper towel, add some extra salt and pepper, and serve!

You can make oven fries with regular potatoes too. Just bring down the cooking time to like 10-20 minutes because regular potatoes will burn more easily.

Aoli (don't use this if you're vegan unless you have vegan mayonnaise):
- 1/3 cup Mayonnaise (bonus points if it's homemade)
- 1-2 tbsp sriracha sauce
- 2-3 cloves garlic
- 1 tsp Lemon or lime juice (I used lemon)
- pepper & salt to taste (I used about 1 tsp pepper and 1-2 tsp salt)
- 1-3 tbsp cayenne pepper (depending on how spicy you like it)
- 1/2 tsp cumin

So, the funny thing about aoli is: it's just a fancy word for mayonnaise. You put stuff in it to make it taste better, but it's usually just mayonnaise (yeah - all those fancy restaurants that have "aoli" somewhere on the menu? It's because they're too chicken to just call it what it is so you're actually willing to pay more money and think it's healthy or high-class or something).

To make it, you just mix all the ingredients together until it tastes good. Up the quantities of everything if you want more aoli to dip into or if you're putting it on top of a burger.

Items not donated or dumpstered: olive oil, garlic, spices, sriracha sauce

Curried Sweet Potatoes

My good friend Kendall and I made this dish for a birthday pot-luck a few months back which mostly had vegetarians and vegans in attendance (we also made some vegan jalapeno corn bread with a spicy mango-ginger chutney, which I'll hopefully post the recipe for soon). Unfortunately, Kendall and I don't get to see each other as often as we'd like to since we live kind of far away from each other and are both incredibly busy folks. Making this dish doesn't require a lot of prep time, and you have to wait around 40 minutes for these to finish in the oven. This leaves ample time to catch up and commune with your friends, which is exactly what Kendall and I did before heading to the party. Our dishes were gone minutes after we placed them on the table, and folks lamented that they couldn't come back for seconds. As the demi-god Charlie Sheen would say: winning.

I re-made this dish after dumpstering sweet potatoes the other day, and it was just as good (and easy) as the first time. This time, I ended up hanging out with my housemate (who was about to move to NY) while I waited for the sweet potatoes to cook. I got a little engrossed in the conversation, so the potatoes got left in the oven a bit too long, which is why they look a little TOO crispy in the photo above. In the end, they still tasted yummy and I got to have a great time talking to my roommate (and friend) before he left.

CURRIED SWEET POTATOES

Ingredients:
- Sweet potatoes
- Around 1/2 cup vegetable or olive oil (I'm pretty sure we used olive oil both times)
- Juice from 1/2-1 lemon
- Yellow curry powder (a LOT of it)
- A butt-ton of rosemary
- A healthy dose of nutmeg
- An equally healthy dose of cinnamon
- Salt & pepper to taste (I put on a lot)

Wash and cut your sweet potatoes into cubes - maybe around 1"x1". Leave the skins on for extra nutrients.
Throw everything else on your sweet potatoes and toss so the potatoes are covered.
Put them on a baking sheet covered in tin foil.
Bake in an oven at 350-400 (the higher the temperature, the crispier the outside of the sweet potatoes will get).
Take them out and turn them over a bit around half way through.
40 minutes later, and you're done. You can tell they're done if a fork goes into them easily.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Honey, spices (rosemary was from the garden)