{"id":25631,"date":"2015-08-28T17:23:03","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T23:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=25631"},"modified":"2015-08-28T17:23:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T23:23:03","slug":"fried-chicken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/fried-chicken\/","title":{"rendered":"Fried chicken!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ted_Roberts\"

Well, I responded with all the alacrity of any full-blooded southerner who loved Memphis, Tennessee, but fed his family with a bi-weekly paycheck. Sure. We went to Boston.<\/p>\n

He was right \u2013 it was a culinary and cultural paradise (if you could live through twelve-inch snowfalls and winter winds that threatened sensitive and essential parts of the body). Beside the glacial weather, we acclimated nicely. Even shoveling that foot of snow out of the driveway every morning was easy for my daughter \u2013 I figured I was saving her health club dues and also teaching her the rigors of life like the good father I was.<\/p>\n

Then one night around suppertime the snake showed his face in Eden. I suggested a conservation of my wife\u2019s energy (with a burst of generosity) \u2013 \u201cLet\u2019s eat out,\u201d I announced. Lobster and clams and oysters are nice, but my inner self expressing itself through my taste buds were screaming for the southern fried chicken on which I was raised. After all, we were in the Athens of America. Culinary Science, as well as MIT electronic genus, must flourish here.<\/p>\n

So, we piled in the car (the daughter had done her assigned task of clearing the drive an hour before) so it only took us twenty minutes or so to mush through the driveway. Once we hit the street we zoomed to a typical, classic Boston restaurant that featured a red, neon sign. \u201cFried Chicken\u201d it hollered. Well, you should stop reading here. It was inedible. I suspect the kitchen was staffed by Union Civil War descendants still raging with Confederate hate and paid to sabotage the Southern belly.<\/p>\n

First of all, the use of skillets was obviously banned. They had baked the battered chicken! <\/em><\/strong>That\u2019s equivalent to pot boiling a steak or frying oysters in their shell or catsuping Pate De Foie Gras. We left in a hurry; one hand over our mouths, the other massaging our persecuted stomach. All future fried chicken dinners were cooked at home. It was the end of our gustatory nightlife.<\/p>\n

This nightmare was revived in my memory when an old Boston friend called the other night to triumphantly tell me that he had paid an ex-CIA agent to not only look into the Iranian nuke progress, but also the secrets of Southern fried chicken. When I promised I wouldn\u2019t use his name and additionally agreed to Fed Ex him two perfectly fried drumsticks, he confessed his secrets: Boil the chicken first, keep the top on the skillet, fry it in olive oil – a recipe for disaster if not colon cancer. His \u201cagent\u201d must have been a double<\/em><\/strong> agent whose ancestors wore gray at Gettysburg. I\u2019m skipping other details that would put you on a non-chicken diet.<\/p>\n

I gently, softly, but persuasively explained that if he persisted in this behavior, he\u2019d kill the diner as well as the chicken. And being an open-minded seeker of fried chicken cookery, he thanked me. I hung up and looked out the window to make sure I was now in Huntsville where the natives and eateries have mastered this culinary art. Since I\u2019m not on commission, I\u2019ll withhold their names \u2013 you know who they are. Think I\u2019ll have it for supper tonight.<\/p>\n

My mama was an artiste when it came to battered, skillet-born chicken. But as a child \u2013 therefore junior member of the family \u2013 in that benighted age I dined on necks and gizzards. Breasts and drumsticks were for mamas and papas. But I eventually graduated. Who could forget their first drumstick? It ranked well with other measures of maturation.<\/p>\n

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