If I have one big culinary regret, it’s that I never asked my grandma to teach me her recipes. She made two of my favorites growing up: fried chicken and chicken and noodles. As a kid, I’d insist that she cook my birthday dinner, which in hindsight was awfully selfish since it meant she spent all day in the kitchen in the late summer heat, rolling out and cutting noodles by hand or frying large batches of chicken in a deep pan of oil.

Grandma was born on the Fourth of July, a date I remember for obvious reasons. We’d always celebrate her birthday with angel food cake and fireworks. Never chicken though. I don’t know who would have baked the cake. Her sister, my Great Aunt Pearl, was a terrible cook. I thought the white sponge was alright, but the frosting – made from egg whites, I think – was disgusting.

I demanded better for my birthday. Chocolate cake, please, with chocolate butter cream frosting. (My mom would make that, thank you very much.) And fried chicken. Or chicken and noodles. Grandma would sigh. “You pick.”

I rarely eat fried chicken these days even though, when done right, it’s still one of my favorite foods. Grandma’s batter – buttermilk, I reckon – was delicious; her fry, the crisp was perfect. Born in Mississippi and raised in Texas, she made it the way it should be, like some ur bird to which all others are mere derivatives. I remember thinking as a kid, obviously confusing the brand for the state, “Why do people think Kentucky fried chicken is so good?” Usually it’s the batter that’s wrong when I eat fried chicken at a restaurant – fast food or otherwise. Actually, it’s the chicken that’s wrong – underdone or overdone – but even if the chef nails that part, the crisp and the bite on the batter fail to taste right, fail to conjure up the memories of Grandma’s wood-paneled kitchen, its center island hot with bubbling oil. And my tiny grandma, her long hair pinned up in a silvery bun wearing one of the sleeveless blouses she would always have on in the summer, sweating over the stove.

I have tried a couple of times to make chicken tenders. (If Helen says they are the perfect food, who I am to argue?) I’ve been reluctant to fry bird on the bone, mostly because I really fear those deep pans of hot oil. (I have a knack for setting off the smoke alarm when I cook, even if nothing is burning, and our apartment building has a sprinkler system. Nightmare material.) But I bought a deep fat fryer yesterday, and I made chicken tenders and biscuits and macaroni salad for dinner – a nod to Grandma, more than the Fourth. I didn’t get the batter anywhere near as crispy as hers. I just dredged the chicken breast pieces in flour and egg and flour again. I’m going to switch to a different recipe and try again, this time with the proper skin-on cuts.

“Which is the best part of the bird for fried chicken?” I asked Kin last night. “There’s only one right answer.”

He paused. “Drumstick?” he said, tentatively. I was silent. “So I’m guessing that’s the wrong answer.”

It is. It is.

(Happy birthday, Grandma.)