It’s also among the best meals to share with family and friends; you sit around talking, and drinking lemonade or beer, as the bowl gradually empties and the afternoon goes slowly dim and mellow. Besides, as long as you leave yourself enough time, frying chicken is easy, while still seeming complicated enough to impress. Twain, of course, would have said that I’m being grossly superstitious when I claim that I, a Connecticut Yankee in California, can fry chicken; I may as well season the bird with salt tossed over my shoulder or use a horseshoe to hook each piece from the pan. Well, I can’t make myself Southern. But I can brine the chicken for twelve hours. I can soak it in buttermilk and hot sauce overnight. To make the frying fat, I can clarify butter, and melt the butter into lard, and season the butter and lard with a heavy slice of good country ham (not faux-smoked Safeway hock, but a real, salty-enough-to-roll-your-eyes-back, Gwaltney country shoulder, simmered until the fat tastes softly smoky).
