As the founder and CEO of the first crispy chicken skin restaurant chain in Northern Arizona, I’ll be the first to admit it, I didn’t have a lot of time for love.
It was certainly not the first thing I even thought about when I woke up in the morn. Most mornings I had the same thought, which was how to apply just the right amount of fat salt and seasoning and at just the right temperature to get my chicken skins crispy while retaining that little bit of that juicyness my customers like so well.
The trick, of course, is to render the fat from the subcutaneous layer at just the right time so that you get all the mouth feel without actually feeling a chewy piece of fat in your mouth. Although I personally am not bothered by globs of chewy chicken fat in my mouth, I do understand that my most of my customers don’t care for it, and so it is my mission to prevent chewy fat globs from getting into anybody’s mouth if I can help it. Anybody who eats at one of my ten restaurants that is.
I did a lot of testing for a lot of years to perfect this process. It was definitely what you’d call a passion. It consumed me, in the way I think love is supposed to consume most people. But even now, just a few years past 40, when I have found love, a real nice, good-hearted love, love doesn’t consume me in the same way that getting chicken skin just right did for the 20 years prior. For me, love is about comfort. About being content. It’s just a nice extra to come home to at the end of the day. But it’s not everything.
I still believe that work is where a person’s real passion should be.
I got lucky. And not just because I was the first person to open a crispy chicken skin restaurant in Arizona. I’m lucky because I found someone who feels the same way about passion as I do. The woman I love is just as devoted to her work as I am. If not more! And luckily, our passions and interests overlap. That’s why we met. We’re both obsessed with skin. I cook it and she studies it. She’s actually a dermatological research scientist who studies hair follicle development. We met when she was finishing up her PHD over at the University of Arkansas. I had a good friend there in the Poultry Sciences division named Helga Spork. Strictly platonic, of course. Professor Spork told me about how one of her doctoral students was researching hair follicle development and how the Pourlty Sciences Division was using the research to figure out how to breed a featherless chicken.
And they did. But it was a flop. I tried to to tell them. I thought it was a terrible idea from the start, but Professor Spork wouldn’t listen. I told them that the follicle holes are essential to getting the skin crispy and so were necessary for any eating chicken. They’re like tiny little vents that let heat and moisture out but salt and flavor in. Get rid of them and you might as well just skin every chicken from the start. Without holes the skin it’s just like pure leather. Of course I was right. And not just about the taste, but biology, too. You can’t even raise a factory chicken without feathers and follicles. They just get too hot without the insulation from the feathers, and too scratched up not having feathers to protect them.
Su-Wei is Taiwanese, and the Taiwanese know all about chicken skin. She and I got on like gangbusters right from the start. Through her knowing me, she and the Poultry Sciences team actually started to breed chickens with bigger follicles instead of smaller, which, as I expected, produced the tastiest crispy chicken skin Of all. It took a few tries of course. The early birds had such big follicles the feathers would just fall right out. And then after the chicken has plucked, the big bumps and the large holes, they were, I hate to say it, but almost kind of pornographic. But they got it worked out in a few generations.
I guess it was when Su-Wei took me to the night markets of Taipei that we really fell in love. Just feeding each other all these different flavor combinations of crispy chicken skin bites. Those Taiwanese love chicken so much they eat every part of it, even parts we’d never think to eat. In Taiwan you can eat fried rooster combs, chicken tongues, unlaid eggs and even fried chicken uterus! Chicken utuerus! Right on the street. Each part of the chicken, they got it precooked in big piles, and you just pick the parts you want and they put them on stick and fry them up for you again on the spot. If I had the chance to fulfill one more dream I’d bring that kind of cooking to America. I’d serve fried chicken uterus and tongue and gizzard and heart on a stick in every gas station in every state of the union. I guess I should say that I’ve always wanted to own a chain of gas stations too.
But, like I said, I’m a lucky man and I think I’ve had more than my fair share of dreams come true already with my chain of crispy chicken skin restaurants and marrying Su-Wei.
No need to be greedy when you’re as blessed as I am.