Mom's Chicken Parmesan

Hi everyone. I'm Sam, and I'm hungry. We can explore that thought later and in greater detail (just try and stop me) but for this fleeting moment, I want to say a few words about my mom's chicken parmesan.

Listen -- this is it, kids. Gather round. This is the one you want, the dish that with every individual forkful sears the memory of its flavor into your shamefully unprepared taste buds. It's good.

My mom's chicken parmesan is the dish I have requested for my birthday meal for as long as I've been able to articulate a request. If I ever even had a different birthday meal, that pale un-memory has clearly been eclipsed by the shining supernovae of chicken parms past. After I began to attend college, it became the special meal for my too-infrequent returns home and it remains to this very hour and day the object of flights of my epicurean fancy.

I can't tell you, really, what sets this recipe apart because I'm more than a little fearful (ok, maybe dismissive) of other attempts. I can and will tell you the breasts are beaten flat with a tenderizer rather than butterflied, the breading is spiced with oregano and basil and we pan fry, we don't deep fry. We bake the cutlets enveloped in the sauce, simmering the meat in a ripe, red, tomatoey blanket, adding the cheese at the last moment. We serve over pasta, which if it could talk is saying "I gotta follow THIS act?" (I frequently anthropomorphize my food).

The first bite, every time, makes me chew slowly and gently, just enough to keep getting all the flavor. I think my eyes close a little. It's just that delicious, so savory that my primitive cortices stage a coup and higher function is temporarily non-existant. Finally, there's some sadness at the inevitably clean plate but it's overtaken and overwhelmed by satisfaction.

********

The way I feel about my mom's chicken parmesan is the most extreme example of how I feel about food as an aspect of my life. For me, meals aren't just about sustenance, they're an opportunity to have an adventure. I don't need fancy, expensive, or rare dishes to elicit one, either. I just need creativity, passion, interest, and a little knowledge about food and cooking.

This blog is going to be an opportunity for me to share my adventures with anyone interested in reading them. Sometimes I'll review a restaurant or eatery I've enjoyed and other times I'll share a recipe I've made or a friend has made. The same predilections that allow me to imbue my food with this ridiculous, childlike wonder do the same for other elements of my life, and every now and again I'll share those. Comment, ask for recipes, whatever; feel free to join in the fun.

-Hungry Sam