The really good thing about sharing dinner with friends is…. well…. the obvious…. eating the great food.  But yes…..tonight we had a wonderful night out with a couple of pals.  Splendid cuisine, great company, but probably the best part is the engaging and entertaining conversation.

Tonight we had lots of it.  Loads of fun.  Our topics went from A to Z and back again.  From drunken ghosts to angry pregnant spiders to bungee cord jumping in Africa.

But wouldn’t you know, chicken feet came up… AGAIN.  Yes, again.   That is one topic we just can’t get away from with this couple…. Chicken Feet.  They are forever talking about it. “Say, Ted… can you pass the bread?  And while we’re on the subject, I found the BEST recipe for Chicken Feet Tacos.”

Tonight, we talked about the huge bags of chicken feet you can find at any Piggly Wiggly.  Right next to the humidor with all the cigars on Aisle 14.   How do you fix them?  How do you eat them?  How many feet can one person eat?

The last time we were with these friends, they went on and on about “Dancing with the Chickens” and the crazy chicken feet dance that so many of the chickens perform.

I’m telling you… these two know their chicken feet.  They said you can never have just one foot.  Finger licking good, they said.

How do you fix chicken feet?  I say you should go buy some Dr. Scholl’s Chicken Feet Inserts, for their little Chicken Shoes… but what do I know?

I said I would come up with a recipe tonight…. and here it is.  Five Spoon Rating at Chef2Chef….  YUM!  Can’t hardly wait to give THIS one a try…. not only does it have chicken feet… it also includes that OH SO GOOD fermented bean curd….. Bon Apetit!

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Title: Chicken Feet
Yield: 1 Servings

Ingredients

1    chicken feet
1    oil for frying
1    (pickled) black beans
1    red fermented bean curd
1    garlic
1    hot pepper

Instructions

Put the chicken feet in a pot of boiling water for about 5 min. Then
deep-fry the chicken feet first (it’s called Jau (running) Yau (oil))
a little bit (how long? I haven’t tried that, but I think it should
be until the skin begins to swell). Then heat up the wok, add oil,
(pickled) black beans, red fermented bean curd, garlic, stir fry a
little bit, then put the chicken feet in, add hot pepper and some
water, and put the cover over the wok and just cook. For how long, I
imagine should be around 5-10 min. You can experiment on that.

leung@loc3.tandem.com soc.culture.singapore soc.culture.hongkong

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(Photo Illustration by Polly Kronenberger Photography; original stock image from Alibaba Chicken Manufacturing)