Lol! You spawn something new everyday. Quite by chance I came across a youtube video about “Hacking windows pinball” which reminded me of an article I wrote yonks ago called, strangely enough, Hacking Windows Pinball. “I wonder if it’s related?” I wondered. It was. It was just a video of the “hidden test” cheat I found. Then, to my surprise, I looked at the related videos… There’s zillions of them!

Some of them take even longer to explain how to type 2 words than I did explaining how to reverse engineer in assembler language. And sooooo much bad music… But it does highlight an important message: If you want your content to be popular, it has to be relevant to the interests of 14-year-olds.

(There’s oh-so-many more, but I think it would start killing browsers)

Imagine, just imagine, you discovered the most awesomely best thing in the known universe. And then, on that very same day, in that very same shop, you discovered the equally most awesome thing in the known universe. And THEN, imagine realising that if you combined those two most best things together, that the blinding goodness of mixed elements would multiply together to create a result of such intense and astonishing goodness as to render all other things in the known universe to be pretty crappy in comparison.

Well, I did that.

Discovery One. CLAW OF PHOENIX

Discovery one was sitting right there in a pile of other random not-meat products, trying its best not to look as ludicrous as it obviously is. “Vegetarian Chicken Feen” it pronounced in large capital letters. A pack of liquid suspended, intricately detailed, gelatinous chicken feet were contained within. Although I needed no further reason to purchase the “feen”, I also noted that this not-product was made of “konjac powder”. I didn’t know what that was, but it surely wasn’t TVP or gluten – which could only be a good thing.

I grabbed by precious bag of “CLAW OF PHOENIX – Have no the cholesterol, Low calories, High fibre quality!” and rushed toward the checkout. But little did I know that before I would purchase my feen, a small box of flour from Indonesia would change my life forever…

Discovery Two: Kroger’s Kentucky Seasoned Flour

I don’t know if it was that little chef guy, the crispy chicken or the “Special K” inspired logo that was particularly eye-catching, but it was a design ploy by Krogers that worked well. I immediately snatched up the box: Kroger® Kentucky All Purpose Seasoned Flour. It must take a brave company to blatantly violate so many copyrights, yet still bother registering their name as a trademark. And they didn’t cite their sources for their claims of winning the “Best Award Food”. Neither of those issues bothered me much, as it had just dawned on me the relationship of the two products I was now clutching in my hands….

Discovery Three: Discoveries One and Two.

The process only took a second. Fake chicken feet + Fake Kentucky Fried Chicken Seasoning = Something that I couldn’t possibly comprehend from such a close distance. It was obvious and dazzling. It was tantalising and scary. I needed a lie down.

After a nap, I looked up the feen’s main ingredient, Konjac powder. Konjac turns out to be a kind of yam. I’ve had it a lot in the form of konyaku from Japan. I opened the package and removed the feen. They are a sickening texture – all squishy and gristly.

Following the instructions on the side of Kroger’s Kentucky, I de-yolked a couple of eggs and whipped up the whites.

Next the chicken feen where dipped in the egg whites, and covered generously (yet evenly) in Kroger’s Kentucky Flour.

A plentiful amount of cooking oil was then heated to a point where it made that nice crackly-bubbly noise when you put stuff in it.

The tender chicken feen pieces were plunged into the scolding oil and rotated regularly until they turned a delightful golden-brown and looked pretty KFC-y.

A sprig of parsley was added as garnish for the photographs, then tossed away before the great eating of the feen.

Summary

Although unfair to judge KFC feen with the same yardstick as other fake meat products, due to its deep fried, super-alloy nature, I’ll do it anyway.

Taste : -9- The Kroger Kentucky All Purpose Seasoned Flour gives a stirling effort at replicating the eleven herbs and spices of its namesake. Together with the strange super-absorbent konjac-based chicken feet make a startling and delicious combination.

Texture : -10- Cruchy on the outside, tender on the inside. The glutinous konjac feet give you something to get your teeth into, and the deep fried faux chicken skin really tops it off nicely.

Similarity to the original : -9- This is judged on the similarity to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and not on the similarity to chicken feet. I imagine it would taste nothing like chicken feet, unless chicken feet taste like chicken.

Overall

Kentucky Fried Chicken Feet get 9.5/10 on the TVP-o-meter – gaining extra marks because I invented it, but losing half a point because they splashed oil on my new hoodie, rendering it unwearable.