Baked French Fries

Halloween. Camila wants to be a baker again. Second year in a row. I offered alternatives — a princess, a butterfly, a dinosaur, any of the costumes that five-year-olds usually choose. She said no. She wants the apron, the chef hat, the basket of fake conchas. She wants to be me. For the second time. And the second time feels different from the first — the first time it was cute. The second time it's a statement. She is five and she is making a statement about who she admires, and she admires her mother, and I cannot think of a higher honor from a child than being chosen twice as a Halloween costume.

Luis Jr. decided to go trick-or-treating this year after all. He claimed it was "for Camila" — he would take her while Luis and I stayed home — but Isabella told me later that he asked her to come too, and Diego, and that the four of them went together, the oldest leading the youngest through the Lower Valley, and Luis Jr. held Camila's hand when they crossed streets, and I think the Army will get a good man. A man who holds his baby sister's hand when they cross streets. A man who pretends to be too old for candy but eats it anyway. That kind of man.

Sofia stayed home to hand out candy. She wore the bakery apron — the professional one, the one with her name — and she gave out conchas instead of candy because "brand awareness," she said, and I almost fell over because my twelve-year-old daughter is using Halloween as a marketing opportunity and I can't decide if this is brilliant or terrifying. Probably both. Sofia is usually both.

I made caldillo duranguense this week — the Durango-style beef and green chile stew that is Rosa's favorite cold-weather food. Not Rosa's recipe — she didn't make this one — but a recipe from a woman I met at the bakery, a customer named Luz who is from Durango and who shared it with the casual generosity of Mexican women in kitchens. The stew is simple: cubed beef, roasted green chiles, potatoes, tomato, garlic. It simmers for two hours and fills the house with the smell of everything good about October. I served it with flour tortillas — always flour tortillas, because Chihuahua — and Luis had two bowls and Camila had half a bowl (she picked out the chiles) and the house was warm and the stew was hot and the regular week continued in its beautiful, unremarkable way.

Diego's weather station is operational. He has been collecting data for three weeks — temperature, humidity, wind speed — and he showed me a graph he made by hand on graph paper. The graph shows that El Paso in October is dry, warm in the day, cool at night. I said: "Mijo, everyone in El Paso already knows this." He said: "But now we have data." He is nine and data is his love language and I am starting to understand that the world needs people who prove what everyone already knows, because knowing is not the same as proving, and proof is what changes things.

Camila ate around every single green chile in that caldillo — fished them out one by one, set them on the edge of her bowl, and ate nothing but the soft potato cubes and the broth-soaked beef. She was perfectly content. It made me think: the girl does not need the whole stew. Sometimes she just needs the potato. So this week I made her baked french fries — crispy on the outside, tender inside — because a five-year-old who dresses as her mother for Halloween two years in a row has earned a side dish made just for her.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

3 large russet potatoes, scrubbed clean
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Optional: fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 425°F. Line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Cut the potatoes. Slice potatoes lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick planks, then cut each plank into 1/4-inch strips. Keep the skin on for extra texture, or peel first if you prefer.
Soak and dry. Place cut potatoes in a large bowl of cold water and soak for at least 15 minutes — this pulls out excess starch and helps them crisp up. Drain, then spread on a clean kitchen towel and pat completely dry. Dry fries are crispy fries.
Season. Return the dried potato strips to the bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper. Toss until every strip is evenly coated.
Arrange in a single layer. Spread fries in one layer across the two prepared baking sheets, making sure no strips are overlapping. Crowding is the enemy of crispiness.
Bake. Bake for 20 minutes, then flip each fry with a thin spatula. Return to the oven and bake another 12–15 minutes until golden brown and crisp at the edges.
Finish and serve. Taste and add a pinch more salt right out of the oven. Scatter with chopped parsley if using. Serve immediately alongside stew, with flour tortillas, or on their own for a five-year-old who knows exactly what she likes.

Nutrition (per serving)

Baked French Fries — The Potatoes Camila Actually Ate