The Fried Yam Ordeal
Sent in an email ...
call it temporary insanity, but last time we went shopping a couple yams made their way into our cart. this was a couple weeks ago, and predictably they ended up being the last edible items in the fridge.
i was having a pretty good kitchen day. woke up and made some oatmeal -- the kind you have to boil. confidence was high. lunch time rolled around, i strolled into the kitchen, popped open the fridge, saw the lone yams and thought: "sheeeeeit, i got this..." or something like that. the gears were turning. how to make a yam taste good? fry it, of course. i was going to turn these sweet potatoes into a hearty feast. admittedly, i have been watching a lot of Iron Chef as of late.
i went to work. a blur of motion, i assembled my tools and necessary ingredients. there was a pan and some flour, quite a bit of oil, a peeler and knife, and of course, a soon-to-be-tasty yam.
this is getting long already, so i'll try to wrap it up.
- cut and peeled yam without blood or appendage loss
- heated pan with oil
this is where the trouble starts. one would think that with all my fried food eating experience, i'd have a better concept of the preparation process. for lack of a better idea, i tossed the slices into the oil. wild sizzling ensued. it was shortly after this that i realized that i'd neglected the whole flour thing. i was pretty sure i needed that, but was less sure about whether eggs were involved. i proceeded to pull yams from pan and dip into flour, then back in they went.
it's hard to really analyze what went wrong, so i'll just relay the events as they happened and you can draw your own conclusions.
as soon as the beauties hit the oil, the flour and oil decided to partner up and make a weird sludge-like substance that soon enveloped the pan. i'd obviously never seen anything like this. fighting it was futile -- the yams were browning, but the sludge was blackening. i decided that this was not good and took means to rectify it (read: panicked). i went in quick with the spoon, but made the mistake of grabbing the metal pan-handle for leverage. there was some burning of the hand, some flipping of the pan, much smoke and much cursing. i tried my best to rescue the half-cooked yam refugees from their blackened sludge oppressors, but it was hopeless. i had bread for lunch today.
help me.
Mercer's reply ...
As always, I am truly impressed with the prowess exhibited by my roommate in the kitchen. The man who was incapable of grating cheese 6 months ago has really developed into a world class chef. I seem to remember him just the other day claiming that Wolfgang Puck's entree's "sucked," to put it politely. It appears that Paul has proven his dominance again. One would think he would have learned after the last effort he put forth towards frying food. We'll keep the details short to save time, but let it be said that we have had to restock our olive oil supply and we are still finding falafel bits scattered about the apartment.
As his roommate, I feel partially responsible for this incident, so, in an effort to prevent having to see him curled up in the corner, swinging at imaginary beasts with his wooden ladle again, I will from now on keep the refrigerator stocked with quick, easy food options, like yogurt and those delicious 'lunchables', and when I am away at work the door to the kitchen utensils will be locked and the gas turned off. Don't worry people, Paul will recover from this incident, and I assure you further catastrophe will hopefully be averted. The recovery process will be a slow one, but it will happen. We'll just have to start at the beginning where we began last summer, with the simple peeling of a banana. Soon, our friend will return to his normal self esteem, but be sure to give him extra support in the ensuing months. He sure is special, isn't he?