How To Make Food No One Will Eat

By Caroline Clough in Food on Oct 31, 2006 3:37PM

This week Chicagoist thought we would tell you how not to make yam chips. Often enough we do a little research before we make a dish for the site. But yam chips seemed pretty straightforward so we didn't bother checking other recipe sites or cookbooks for their insights. The key to not making yam chips is to be a little loopy or sidetracked. It is definitely best if you are trying to do at least two things at once. Oh, and impatience is also a large factor for a successful plate. This recipe won't fail in failing and will definitely succeed in making you feel like a loser and an idiot. Come along, and learn how to do everything wrong!

In order to make your yam chips inedible you must, must, must start out optimistically. If you go in feeling like you're going to fail ... you might just succeed. And that wouldn't be good, now would it?

What You Need
1 medium to large yam
1/2 cup olive oil (or more)
3 cloves minced or chopped garlic
2 teaspoons salt
an oven
a baking sheet

What You Do
1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Blanch your yam, and let it cool in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
3. Once the yam has cooled, slice it as extremely thin as you can. We used an ulu knife to help us in our quest for super thinness.
4. Mix the olive oil, salt and garlic together in a shallow bowl.
5. Dip each yam slice into the olive oil mixture.
6. Put all yam slices (or as many as will fit) onto the baking sheet and into the oven.
7. Try writing a bit of your novel, start cleaning your house, realize you have an assignment that is due sooner than you thought, realize your baby is hanging off a chandelier while smoking crack ... get completely sidetracked.
8. Focus on the chips for a minute. Run to the oven, and find that they are fine. Use a spatula, and flip them.
9. Find that the baby has gotten off of the light fixture (which is good) but is now mainlining Drano straight into its eyeball (that's bad).
10. Run back to the oven, check the yam chips. Still not done? Well, more time to get flustered about the rabid dog running around your bedroom.
11. Chase the rabid dog until you remember the chips again.
12. Oh! A few of the chips seem to be crisp but not burned! Excellent! Take those chips off of the baking sheet, and place on a paper-towelled plate. Replace the now crisp chips with more yam slices.
13. The baby is now eating all the progress you made on that job you had to do and it sure is drooling a lot ... make sure the baby doesn't have bite marks.
14. Become extremely impatient and turn up your oven to 450 or 500 degrees.
15. Walk away, and think you know what you're doing.
16. Come back after about ten minutes (maybe more) to flip the chips, and find them all burned.
17. Rant and rave.
18. Throw the baby in the trash.
19. Shoot the dog.
20. Quit your job.
21. And you're done!

Bon appetit!