Andres Parlange, who was born in the Chiapas region of Mexico, is more into soccer and tennis than football, but his recipes are still a great addition to your Super Bowl buffet.
“My regional coastal Mexican cooking is hearty and authentic,” says Parlange, 36, who is chef de cuisine at Cantina Beach in The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne.
Here he prepares such popular fan fare as smoky charred vegetable salsa, chicken wings bathed in a honey and chipotle flavored sauce, velvety queso fundido and unusual takes on guacamole.
With his recipes and tips, you can create these easy yet satisfying dishes for your Super Bowl buffet on Sunday.
Growing up in the town of Tapachula, Parlange learned to cook beginning at age 4 by watching his grandmother and the housekeeper prepare the family’s food.
“It wasn’t common for men or boys to be in the kitchen so I would run in and out to see what they were doing. My friends would just eat, but I was more particular than that. I wanted to smell everything,” he says.
Over the past 14 years, the chef’s cooking has been influenced by stints at Ritz-Carlton hotels in Cancun, Pentagon City, Kuala Lumpur, Barcelona and, in Florida, Naples and South Beach.
But as he grew up, it was time spent working at his father’s restaurant in Baja, Mexico, and his training at culinary school in Mexico City that helped Parlange develop the signature cuisine he now serves poolside at The Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne.
Take his salsa tatemada or charred vegetable salsa. Onion slices, tomatoes, jalapeños and tomatillos are seared on all sides until charred and then pureed with cilantro.
“Make sure to use only the freshest, ripest ingredients to maximize their natural flavors,” he says.
The charring can be done in a cast-iron skillet or griddle or on an outdoor grill.
“That black part on the skin of the vegetables is important for flavor. For anyone who has lived in Mexico, the aroma of the caramelizing vegetables is very familiar,” he says.
For another rustic Super Bowl dip, try his queso fundido or melted cheese. It is one of his favorite recipes. “It’s not fancy, but for people from Mexico, this is a very nostalgic dish,” he says.
For it, he uses Queso Chihuahua. It’s a cow’s milk cheese from the Mexican state of Chihuahua that originally was made by Mennonites who settled in this northern part of the country. To this day in Mexico City, if you are at a stoplight, a tall blue- or green-eyed person with blonde hair may come up to your car window to sell you this cheese, Parlange says. They are descendants of those first religious settlers who arrived in the 1920s.
To make queso fundido, Parlange fills a cast iron pan with cheese cubes and heats them in a moderate oven until they melt. Don’t overheat the cheese or it will break down and the oil will separate out.
He garnishes the dish with crumbled bits of cooked guajillo-spiked pork sausage or Mexican chorizo. “The meat and the fat … it’s all part of the flavor of the dish,” he says.
He serves the gooey, rich melted cheese with small rounds of flour tortilla that are heated in a skillet and then tucked into a napkin to keep them warm and moist.
Parlange shows us how to fold a striped linen napkin like a fan into a long strip. Holding the strip, he folds in the ends over each other like a letter. Then he tucks the warmed tortilla rounds into the folds in the napkin that form just the right size pocket for keeping them hot and soft.
As another entry to your Super Bowl buffet, he suggests his guacamole with its flavorful variations. This recipe reminds Parlange of growing up in Mexico. His family had a country place or finca near the beach. They’d go there weekends and grill with friends. Each guest would bring part of the meal, and someone always brought guacamole, he says.
At Cantina Beach, the guacamole is made tableside in a molcajete, a traditional mortar made from volcanic rock. Parlange explains that the Aztecs built their civilization in an area set between two volcanoes. Many of their tools and much of their cooking equipment was made from this rock that was plentiful and easy to find.
“Using the molcajete is like using a wooden spoon to make risotto or your hands to make pasta,” he says. “I’ve learned over the years that when things are done manually in the rustic way, they usually taste better.”
He garnishes the guacamole with crumbled queso fresco and serves it with crisp tortilla chips presented in a metal cone. But he doesn’t stop there.
”I got to thinking that everywhere you go, you can get basic guacamole. So I decided to add some different flavors,” he says.
For one variation, he stirs chopped pineapple into the preparation. Then he garnishes the guacamole with more pineapple and pomegranate seeds. You can use chopped fresh pineapple but it’s better to first grill the pineapple slices and then chop them, he says.
For another variation, he folds in chopped mango before garnishing it with chicharrones. The fried pork skins make flavorful dippers instead of tortilla chips.
The thought of chicharrones makes Parlange nostalgic for the open-air market a few blocks from his childhood home where they fried chicharrones daily.
In this country, chicharrones come in bags that are found in the snack aisle of supermarkets. Parlange did a tasting and found that the Mambi brand most closely resembles what he remembers from home. “You want the chicharrones to be crisp but not break your teeth,” he says.
Finally, he makes a simple sauce for fried or baked chicken wings with barbecue sauce, honey, Tabasco brand Chipotle Pepper Sauce and Buffalo-style hot wing sauce.
He admits his wings aren’t traditional. But for sports fans who want something that’s familiar yet still has the flavors of Mexico, he highly recommends them.
Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley can be reached at debhartz@att.net.
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