The Southern Cone · Volume 26, Coast, Valley and the Mapuche and German South
Machas a la parmesana
Viña del Mar, 1957
Illustration
- Time
- 5 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 30 sources in the brief
Created in 1957 at the Italian restaurant San Marco in Viña del Mar, by the Italian immigrant Edoardo Melotti Ferrari, from Nonantola in Emilia-Romagna, Parmigiano's own home region, together with his cousin Adelfo Garuti. This chapter states plainly what several Chilean sources already state: there is no record of the dish before the 1950s, and Parmesan cheese itself only reached Chile by ship around that time, prompting the experiment. A well corroborated mid-twentieth century Italian-immigrant invention, not an old coastal tradition dressed up as one.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. Gratinate about 5 minutes.
Ingredients
- 20 machas in their half-shells (double if small) macha (surf clam) meat, left in one half of its shell
- 1 tsp per shell (20 tsp total) grated Parmesan
- 1 to 2 small pea-sized cubes per shell a little butter
- 1 tsp white wine per shell, or a squeeze of lemon white wine or a touch of lemon
Method
- Leave the macha meat in one half of its shell.
- Top with grated Parmesan and a little butter, and season with white wine or a touch of lemon.
- Gratinate briefly in the oven.
What a modern chef changes
Queso Chanco underneath, Parmesan only as the finish
Method
- Use queso Chanco, a semi-soft Chilean table cheese, as the actual melting cheese, since the traditional dish's melting cheese is not really Parmesan at all, whatever the dish's own name implies.
- Finish with only a light dusting of true Parmesan on top, as in the original, as the finishing touch rather than the whole event.
- Gratinate briefly and hard in a Big Green Egg run very hot, direct heat, lid down, for a genuinely fast, high-temperature sear that browns the cheese while leaving the clam barely cooked through, closer to the original's brief oven blast than a slow domestic grill.