Baked sweet potato fries

I started wearing close-toed shoes a couple weeks ago. If that’s not a sign that autumn has arrived, I don’t know what is. I’m also finding myself drawn to using my oven once more. I couldn’t have imagined anything more unpleasant than turning it on just a couple months back and yet here I am craving oven-baked sweet potato fries. There is so much discussion on the web about how to achieve faux deep-fried fries. For example, coating them with a thin layer of cornflour or semolina tricks your tastebuds into believing you’re actually eating something really crispy and, therefore, fried, even if you’re not. (PS Yoghurt + honey + a pinch of cinnamon makes a damn good dipping sauce.)

• serves

  1-2

• prep

  15 minutes

• cook

  30 minutes

• difficulty

  Easy

Ingredients

• 1 orange sweet potato, scrubbed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp cornflour, semolina or cornmeal
• salt and pepper, to season
• ground spice (such as paprika, cayenne pepper, cinnamon or cumin), to flavour

Dipping sauce

• ¼ cup Greek-style yoghurt 
• 1 tsp honey
• pinch of ground cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200˚C.

Slice the sweet potato into equal-size sticks (about 1 cm thick). Rinse in a bowl of water and lay out to dry.

Meanwhile, combine the dipping sauce ingredients in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate until needed.

Place the sweet potato, olive oil, cornflour and spice, as desired, in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, and toss to combine. Lay the fries out on a baking tray in a single layer (I don’t bother and crisp and ends start to blacken).

Serve the fries with the dipping sauce.

Recipe from The Tart Tart by Linda Xiao, with photographs by Linda Xiao.

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.