Deep Fried Love

Kentucky Fried Chicken,they said,would never catch on. Some on the left warned that large profit-making corporations should not be trusted with food,just in case they try to make money off it; some on the right hissed angrily that Indians already had tandoori chicken,they didn’t need any other kind of fast food; some in the centre sniffily said fast food was a cultural imposition anyway.

If you want to know where 20 years of reform have taken us,walk over to a KFC today. I was in one recently,and it was difficult not to imagine that Colonel Sanders,when he came up with his original recipe,really intended to sell it to a future Indian middle class.

Fried chicken is the single most comforting food in existence,true; but,also,there’s something about it that appeals extra to this country,connoisseurs of anything deep-fried and orange that we are. There’s batter. There’s crispiness. There’s spice. There’s chicken. What’s not to like? So,above the sustained roar of North Indian families satisfying their cravings,you could just about hear the sound of appropriation.

Normally,nothing tastes better if cooked on an industrial scale. Fried chicken may be one of the very few exceptions. Partly,that’s because few of us have the kitchen infrastructure to get enough oil sufficiently hot. Chicken pieces aren’t like pakoras; it’s not as easy to flip them around in a half-inch of boiling oil,counterfeiting an even crispiness all over. My attempts to make a nicely fried chicken at home have always been deeply satisfying at the time,but I continue to have a sneaking suspicion that I will never quite make it as well as a chain restaurant,which is,quite frankly,galling.

There are basically three tricks to Southern-style chicken at home. The first: put some paprika in the flour. Paprika is a magical spice we should use more of. Second: when you coat your chicken pieces with milk,sour the milk beforehand with a teaspoon or so of nimbu-juice. Third: when you then coat your milky chicken pieces with a flour-salt-and-paprika mix,make sure it is neither powdery nor jelly-like but a smooth paste all over. Then,of course,fry your chicken pieces for half an hour or so in enough oil to float the Titanic. It’s simple,tasteful,and staggeringly unhealthy.

Eating this artery-hardening dish is less a solitary and more a shared experience. In the American south,the home of fried chicken,it is the food of outdoorsy summers,of big picnics with chilled beer,a part of the region’s Sweet Home Self-image — so much so that the best self-parodying country songs can even manage to smuggle it into a “salute the troops” verse. (Zac Brown’s Grammy-winning Chicken Fried: “Salute the ones who died/ The ones that give their lives/ So we don’t have to sacrifice/ All the things we love/ Like our chicken fried/ And cold beer on a Friday night.” Seriously.) For me,though,fried chicken is the taste of cold midnights on an American highway,of trooping half-starved,half-asleep into a brightly-lit,bustling space — perhaps KFC,perhaps its rival,Popeyes — and tearing into a few satisfying pieces,perfect and crisp-skinned on the outside and tender and flavourful ­inside. It would slowly wake you up,gradually revive you,and as you got up to put your tray away,somehow ready to get back on the road for another long trek across a small bit of that huge country,you would look around and see that there wasn’t a person sitting at the old-fashioned laminated tables who didn’t look the better for being there. Miraculous,given that it was a generic chain outlet selling factory-farmed poultry fried in grease.

Urban India is more than capable of making comfort food its own,especially if it’s deep-fried enough. Even as that first Bangalore KFC was being picketed by angry Karnataka farmers,another one opened in New Friends Colony in Delhi. Soon thereafter it announced a special promotion. For Rs 100,every Tuesday,you would get a little wristband saying “mangal hi mangal” and as much chicken as you could eat. I was in college at the time,and one hungry boy among many; we went,we paid,we cleaned them out. And then we went back the next week — but by that time the entire front of the restaurant was covered by a giant,snaking,patient queue,dozens and dozens of people in bamboo-demarcated lines. It was pretty obvious that all those happily foretelling doom for fried chicken in India were going to wind up with egg all over their faces.

So the next time you pass a KFC outlet,don’t turn your nose up. Some foods were meant to be fast food. Go in,and get yourself a bucket,and raise a wing to toast that 1991 speech that made it possible.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com