I Ate Raw Chicken This Week
A short tale about my sister who used to be the worst cook in my family.
My sister Menucha would sometimes make dinner for the entire family. Most of the kids were born by then, so she was cooking for 13 or 15 people at a time. Unfortunately, she had a tendency to serve the cooked carrots crunchy and the rice half raw. Menucha was one of the smartest siblings of the bunch but pretty shitty in the kitchen. In retrospect, she was 11 years old the last time I remember eating her food. I guess I can’t blame her for her severely lacking skills in that arena.
I left the house and she grew up. She moved to Florida and then to Israel, and spent time in kitchens around the world. We’d talk on the phone and she’d tell me how much her friends loved her food. I believed her, but only because she was in the army and she probably cooked really well for a soldier. She’d tell me about her shakshuka which I assumed was tangy from uncooked tomatoes. Menucha shared how she didn’t even get a chance to eat her cookies because all her friends had finished them before her. Yeah right, I thought. They must have thrown them out so no one would have died of salmonella.
Little siblings tend to stay little siblings until one day, you blink, and they’ve become way too big. The same thing happened with her and food. I thought she was a bad cook until I saw her at her house and she cooked some pretty darn good dishes. I ate meals made of spicy, sexy shakshukas and creamy, golden vegetable soups. One day, she showed me how to make the best fried chicken with chicken thighs (not chicken breast), too many spices (way too many spices and that’s exactly enough) and medium hot olive oil. Menucha told me to give the coated chicken thighs a few extra minutes in the pan to make them extra crispy. I licked my fingers when I finished eating lunch that day.
A few weeks later, I tried to replicate her fried chicken. I bought the thighs, carved the bones out and saved them for a soup later on. I lathered them in spices and let them marinate in the dry rub for 30 minutes in the fridge. I heated the oil (canola, not olive this time), and rested the chicken in the pan. I let it fry and then covered it with foil to create some steam. I flipped the chicken, raised the temperature a drop, and pulled the pieces out when they looked perfectly golden. I grabbed my knife and fork and anxiously cut into the meat. I took a bite and started chewing. Then I looked down at the chicken itself. It was bright pink inside.
I kept chewing because at this point, I was curious what raw chicken tasted like (like chicken, but juicer). If only I could go back in time and serve my chicken with Menucha’s crunchy carrots and her half raw rice.
Ok, I'll be the first to say it. Don't eat raw chicken.
“I licked my fingers when I finished eating lunch that day.” Such a perfect illustration of a “show don’t tell” moment. This might be the first time a description of a failed recipe has made me hungry.