Yam Fries

I'm amazing that I am so far into this blog and I haven't made a post with yams yet.  Yams are tasty and delicious.  Hopefully now that the weather is getting cold I will remember to cook with them more.
Sometimes I get little fingerling yams from the Farmer's Market at Lunken Airport.  But I typically stick with huge yams like this one (TWSS!):

Are you reading TWSS and wondering what that means and wishing you got my joke?  The first time I read that I had to google it to understand.  It means, "That's What She Said."  Which is a fairly common saying around here.

So there are all kinds of things you can do with yams.  This time around, I chose to make chunky french fries.  I will warn you in advance that the finish picture isn't quite as tasty looking as the yam fries actually were.  They just didn't brown up like I would have liked.

So...first you cut the yam into fries.  I used a huge knife to make the task a bit easier.

Coconut oil is second only to peanut in for my favorite cooking oils.  I didn't discover the use of anything other than olive oil and vegetable oil until sometime in the last year or two.  Buy other oils...its worth it.  Here is the coconut oil I use.  Ironically, I've also been using this as a face moisturizer for the last month or so.

Coconut oil comes as a solid, but liquefies very easily.  I put a blob in that bowl and then microwaved it for just a short time.  Afterwards, me and the yam had a massage party :).  This turned out to be a bit of a gritty massage for the yam, as I also sprinkled on some seasonings.  For this batch, I used course ground salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of cayenne powder.

I sprinkled some sugar over them before i put them in the oven.  This is supposed to help caramelize them.  Mine didn't really caramelize though.

These were absolutely delicious.  I ended up making two batches over the course of a week because they were so yummy.