Chiki Chiki Parm Parm, by guest author Nate

Our days of food revolutionaries began early in our relationship, when we would spend whole Sunday afternoons cooking and baking an array of delicious foods, aptly named: Delicious Food (take for example the hours that we spent making my mother's delicious rolls for the Superbowl party last year, which ended up being as dense a rocks). Both Rebekah and I thoroughly enjoy delicious food if not for the assortment and combinations of spices and tastes, for the boredom of a repetitive meal.

It is on this premise that we decided to make Chiki Chiki Parm Parm (Chicken Parmesan) for dinner this last week, to maintain the long-standing tradition of Italian culture that we both have running through our veins. We have on several occasions made lasagna, spaghetti, and other Italian foods, so to keep from repeating a dish, we decided on this delicacy, one of our favorites.

The subjective recipe, among fresh vegetables, called for 1 lb of fresh basil, which nearly deterred us from the dish, until Rebekah decided it would be worth the cost (I later reread the recipe which called for only "1 half bunch of hand-shredded basil; needless to say the entree was basil-y).

After a lesson on chicken breading, discussion of the total volume of 1/2 bunch of basil, how long "until the cheese starts to boil" is, and other seemingly trivial questions, we were happy to see the final product emerge from the oven. Rebekah had an evening meeting to attend, so it was my responsibility to finish the meal preparations, including taking the Pyrex from the oven, and finding an adequate place for it to cool.

The final product, lacking in presentation, but delicious nonetheless

The final product, including the Pyrex baking dish settled precariously on the stove-top

Doubting that the laminate counter-top would support the "cheese bubbling" temperature of the Pyrex, I decided to place the baking pan in the nearest non-burnable surface I could find, namely the stove-top, resting on two burners. I have placed many-a-baking dish on the stove top without consequence, but one of the key steps in breading chicken is the frying-of-the-chicken part. The chicken was fried in the olive oil in a fry pan until brown, and if one looks closely at the dial in the above photo, the burner was never relieved of its duties.

Just after the above photo, I sat at the table to partake of the delicious meal when I noticed a trace of burned chiki. While at first I presumed that the pan had been in the oven past the point of bubbling cheese, the smoke emanating from the pan confirmed my suspicion that the dish was cooking even outside of the oven. I noticed the burner dial had been left at the fry breaded chicken setting, and as quickly as I could grabbed hot pads from the drawers all the way across our 5 foot kitchen.

I placed the Pyrex as quickly as I could on the adjacent burners, and wiped my forehead of perspiration, relieved to see 3 hours of toil saved from the grasp of a greedy mediumly-heated burner, until...(each period representing one second), CRASH! (It sounded just like a misdirected baseball pitch through a neighbor's window).

3 hours of toil lost atop the saving burner

Look closely, there is glass everywhere

The splintered glass holding the remains

The entire dish literally exploded as I stood before it, many of its pieces hitting me directly in the abdomen. Fortunately, my glass-proof T-shirt was able to withstand the blows of dozens of pebble-sized Pyrex, and saved my life from Chicken Parmesan.