There are things that can throw one in life, like seeing a man wearing a cape in Brixton or a person wearing their headphones outside of their hat. These sort of things throw you because they are not considered normal.
A few things that have not exactly thrown me but have given me pause for thought have been; people who do not like chocolate – I really do not understand this, so maybe that throws me a little. I once knew a woman who would lose weight over the Christmas period because she did not like Christmas foods. Odd but not unprecedented.
Something that is odd for me is my dislike of sweetcorn. I like the smell of it and the look, I just don’t like the taste. Unrelated to food, the oddest and most discombobulating dislike I have ever heard was many years ago when I worked in a department store. One of my work colleagues said her husband did not like music. No sort of music? None. This floored me. I was told this over twenty years ago and it is still one of the weirdest dislikes I have ever encountered. Who doesn’t like music?
Back to food. A common food amongst black people, even to the point of parody, is chicken. It is rare the black person who does eat or like chicken, though I did know a girl, a black girl, who did not like chicken. She did love music though.
Chicken, along with rice and peas, is another staple of black households. Generally, Sunday is chicken day but truthfully, any day can be chicken day. Roast chicken, fried chicken, barbecue chicken, all varieties are welcome.
As in all things, preparation is key. A bit of salt and pepper and whack it in the oven is not good enough and by not ‘good enough’ I don’t mean to add a bit of thyme for flavour. Preparation starts with the cleaning of the chicken, which involves lemons and water and no soap or bleach.
What goes on the chicken varies depending on how one wants it to taste. The most important thing, almost more important than the flavour of the fowl, is that it not be dry. There is nothing worse than a dry bird.
A well seasoned and cooked piece of chicken is a thing of beauty. It is pleasing to all of the senses when done properly. With the skin on and cooked to perfect orange/bronze, a leg and thigh joint gets the juices flowing as soon as one’s eyes gaze upon it. The aroma of just-right cooked chicken is better than fresh bread and if the taste matches the look and the smell, it is happy days in the belly department!
Many find red meat too heavy for their taste and pork has a lot of negative connotations attached to it but chicken, the trusty fowl, is always welcome in many a black household.