Number six special

To the editor:
    “Whole chicken is very popular for Chinese New Year with head and feet left on, but that is optional,” said the restaurant owner. On hearing this, I recalled how years ago, the chickens’ heads fell in the grass when  my father removed them with an axe. The feet were gone by the time my mother handed the birds to my brother Leonard and me, fresh from the boiling water, to be picked clean.
    Fast forward to 1975, when chicken feet were considered essential for making consomme, and Joyce Chen, a television chef who extolled the meat as a delicacy, showed viewers how to use it.
    At that time, one could still buy chickens with the feet left on here in Rochester. When a friend and I went to a once-kosher market, we found it completely bare inside except for the counters. On Fridays and Saturdays three Buffalo butchers brought chickens in cages, which they stacked up high on the counters. As I chose two chickens, a butcher took them from the cages, weighed and priced them, and headed to the back room for “processing.”
    Sure, we could watch, said the butcher. “It’s real simple, all automated now.” Except for the first step, that is. The butcher bent back the chicken’s head, sliced the neck with a knife, and placed each chicken’s body head-first into the round well of a metal stand “just to get rid of the blood.”
    Next the chicken went into a rack, which could hold six birds, and a lever was pulled that lowered them into a vat of boiling water, whence they went into a round stainless steel drum. A button was pushed, and as the ensuing spinning ceased, a door opened to reveal them naked.
    A butcher explained, “Rubber fingers in there take out the feathers.” He showed us a circle of projections on the centrifuge floor. I was so impressed with those fingers that I neglected to check on toenails.
    I had recalled shopping in Israel, where my first chicken came with the feet included, but without toenails—except one. That was one too many for me! In Rochester, once home, I opened the package right away, thinking surely they had been trimmed off. I should be so lucky—every toenail was still in place! Cutting them off provided the penultimate step in my pursuit of a poultry-free diet.
    In the Chinese restaurant I ordered,  “Number six on the specials menu—yes, the vegetarian one.”
Byrna Porter Weir
Rochester, New York