A quest to cook the chicken worth falling in love over.
Words by Nico Madrigal-Yankowski
It was the summer of 2014, in San Francisco, and I hosted a fried chicken dinner party for the girl I loved.
OK, sure, I did relish hosting a get-together where friends from different walks of my life bonded over a home-cooked meal. And yes, I certainly derived some personal satisfaction from every ooooh and ahhhhh from my guests as I placed the mountain of golden-brown fried poultry showered with fresh rosemary sprigs before them. It wasn’t just any fried chicken, after all; it was rosemary-brined fried chicken.
But, I’m ashamed to admit, I had ulterior motives, too. I wanted to impress her, and I wanted to win over her friends in hopes that I’d get their unfailing support in my pursuit to their friend’s heart. I wanted her to love me like I loved her.
I planned every aspect of the dinner party meticulously. I wore my best jeans, a light-blue collared shirt, fancy boots, and my mom’s quirky apron, emblazoned with the cards of a Mexican bingo game called Loteria. I pored over countless recipes online, in magazines, and in cookbooks to figure out how to make the crispiest, crunchiest fried chicken. Eventually, I landed on a recipe for Michael Ruhlman’s rosemary-brined, buttermilk fried chicken on Food52.
As cliche as it may sound, the recipe truly was a scale of different textures and flavors. The flour-to-buttermilk-back-to-flour coating method ensured a crack! that was audible on everyone’s first bite and an equally discernible crunch with each ensuing chew. The 24-hour wet brine of the chicken guaranteed tender meat with notes of onion, garlic, lemon and, of course, rosemary. I envisioned a juicy, un-greasy, aromatic fried bird that would leave everyone exclaiming, “That was the best fried chicken I’ve ever had!”
When my guests arrived, I was still hovering over the stove, frying the chicken pieces in a huge 14-inch cast iron skillet, just as I had intended in my detailed blueprint for the evening. I was creating a spectacle. My mom graciously allowed me to use her kitchen, the same one I grew up in, to cook for the party. It was loaded with a shiny stainless-steel stove, every cooking appliance imaginable, and a kitchen island perfect for standing around with a glass of wine or beer, still close enough to the stove so I could be social while cooking.
She laughed at me for wearing my mom’s apron. It was a good kind of laugh though, exactly what I was hoping for. Her beaming smile, which extended from ear to ear and could command a room, forced me to smile as wide as she did. We hugged as we normally did before we all feasted.
The chicken was a hit. To this day, some of those guests still talk about that recipe. But I haven’t cooked it since. This is a complicated story, you see. It’s not exactly breaking news to state that love isn’t always easy; it certainly hasn’t been for me. She and I had known each other since kindergarten. We grew up around the corner from each other in Noe Valley, our neighborhood. We carpooled together, attended the same elementary and middle schools, and went on vacations with our respective families every summer. We were friends, first and foremost. And that’s what made it thorny.
It wasn't until 2011 that I fell in love with her. Twenty years of being just friends was working fine for both of us. Then, I went to visit her in New York when she attended New York University as an undergraduate; it was my first time visiting New York without my parents.
I was still living in California then. Just days before, I had dropped out of college, but I hadn’t told any of my friends yet. I planned my trip to New York for spring break, but I came with news she could never have expected. We had never shared very private information with each other; we were friends, sure, but we weren’t best friends. But anyone that ever met her would tell you her compassion was fierce, evident from the moment she shook your hand. She’d always effused warmth, and that night, I must have really felt it.
Even though I was ashamed, I didn’t hesitate to tell her I had dropped out. To my astonishment, she didn’t judge me at all. I felt relieved when I was able to get that secret off my chest. There seemed to be an air of newfound comfort between us, too. When we arrived at the packed dance club on the Lower East Side where we were meeting her friends, we ordered drinks with our fake IDs and waited. The club had dimmed lights, red leather-bound booths surrounding the dance floor and a rooftop area swarming with drunk college kids. She knew this was my first time in a New York club, and she didn’t want me to get lost, so she took my hand and weaved us through the dance floor of sweaty people to get to the rooftop stairwell.
At that moment, something changed for me. When she held my hand through that sea of damp shirts and strobing lights, I felt a sensation like an electric current course through the rest of my body. It was, for lack of a better term, like magic. I no longer saw her as just a friend. To me, she was now the most important person in the world.
But she didn’t feel the same way, I’d soon learn. Later that summer, I told her this story expecting her to have had the same experience. I asked her out. With a sheepish look on her face, she stared at her feet. “Not right now,” she replied. For the next three years, I was in denial. I couldn’t handle the rejection. I pretended my love for her didn’t exist. For about six months, I cut off all communication with her in the hopes that my love for her would go away. But it didn’t.
At some point in 2014, I finally accepted that we could still be friends even though I loved her. That’s what she wanted, anyway. Once I made peace with this reality, I started hosting dinner parties. I lost myself in another love, cooking. Michael Ruhlman’s Rosemary-Brined Fried Chicken was the first of many meals I made for friends, including her, over the next six years. Carnitas tacos, paella Valenciana, and cacio e pepe were all fan favorites. But as I said earlier, I always had ulterior motives. If I invited her to these dinners, maybe my cooking would convince her to love me back, I hoped.
Cooking for my friends didn’t replace my love for her, but it healed some of my heartbreak. My dinner parties were moments when I didn’t have to wallow in pain, anger and sadness. They were joyful occasions where she and I could just be. Some of my happiest moments with her took place when I fed my friends. To this day, I’m still dealing with my unrequited love for her. Well, “deal” probably isn’t the best word to describe how I work through what I feel for her. It carries a negative connotation. I love loving her. She’s the best person in the world, and for now, there is no one I would rather be in love with.
It’s been almost seven years since that summer with rosemary-brined, buttermilk chicken, but I still hope that one day her feelings for me might change. It’s unfortunate that the crunchiest, crispiest fried- chicken ever didn’t win her over like I hoped it would. These days, I just want to be the best friend I can possibly be. She doesn’t owe me anything, I’ve realized, least of all her love.
Nico is a recent graduate of the NYU Food Studies Master’s Program and freelance writer covering food and the people behind it.
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