Fear of Frying

These days, the fear of flying is everywhere. My fear, however, is far more pedestrian: Frying. More to the point, frying chicken. As with most fears, this one mingles the rational with the irrational, though I have a hard time distinguishing the two. I’ll leave that to you.

One drawback to frying chicken is downright practical. My mom, a health-food advocate from way back, banished fried foods from the house. In fact, I’m not even sure they were ever allowed in the first place. So no deep, familial memories of the smell of fried chicken wafting from the kitchen. Unless you count Ethel’s fried chicken, which came out of my grandmother Annie’s kitchen. Ethel was the African American woman hired to help my grandmother cook and clean. And that leads to resistance theme #2.

For me — and for many folks growing up in the South back then — fried chicken was something reserved for Black cooks only. Whites simply didn’t know how to do it. And then later on, a white cook making fried chicken was viewed as cultural appropriation.

So yet another dilemma for this soul food kitchen in Tel Aviv: I love fried chicken. And dearly wanted it on my menu. But didn’t know how to approach it. More to the point, I really didn’t know how to prepare it. Ya know what: It is a lot harder than you would think. I probably went through a whole truck load of chickens before I finally felt I could, without shame, put it on my menu. But it’s there now. Never too late for the real treasures in life.