Chilean · Starter
Machas a la Parmesana
- Easy
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a briny, maritime salinity, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 24 razor clams or surf clams, on the half shell
- 60 g butter, softened
- 120 ml dry white wine
- 120 g semi hard cow's milk cheese, coarsely grated
- 1 garlic clove, grated
- black pepper
- 1 lemon, in wedges
Equipment
Grill · Sheet pan · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · shellfish · molluscs · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Open the clams, leave each one on its flat half shell, and flatten the foot with the back of a knife so it sits level.
- Set the grill to its highest setting with a shelf close under the element, and let it come fully hot.
- Arrange the shells on a tray, dot each with butter and a trace of garlic, spoon in a little wine and grind on pepper.
- Cover them with the cheese and grill 4 to 6 minutes, until the cheese blisters and bubbles at the rim while the clam beneath is still plump. 6 min
- Serve straight from the tray with lemon; a plate left standing goes rubbery in its own shell.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño or Muscadet
- Also Right
- Assyrtiko or Vermentino
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
The Atlantic’s whites beside the sea’s own liquor: salinity in sympathy, acid keeping everything bright.
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