quesadilla

A Mexican dish consisting of melted cheese in a tortilla. Yum!

I like to use Montery Jack cheese. Grate the cheese into a bowl and set aside. Heat some butter in a frying pan (use cast iron for the greatest cooking pleasure) and fry the tortilla for half a minute. Flip it over, then add the cheese and continue frying until the cheese melts. Fold the tortilla in half, top with salsa and cilantro, and eat hot.

I can subsist off these things for months. You can even make them in the microwave, although they aren't nearly as good (nor as crispy).

Recipe:Quesadilla

Ingredients (per serving)

• 2 flour tortillas
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup shredded cheese (Monterey Jack is a good starting point, or you can buy those pre-shredded bags of "Mexican blend" at most supermarkets)
• 1/2 roasted poblano, shredded into small (3-5 mm x 3-5 mm) pieces.
• (optional) 2 oz. shredded grilled chicken

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450F.
2. Place aluminum foil onto a cookie sheet.
3. Place both tortillas flat onto the cookie sheet, and place into the oven for 5 minutes, until lightly brown.
4. Remove the tortillas from the oven.
5. Distribute 2/3 of the cheese evenly over one tortilla.
6. Sprinkle the roasted poblano and the chicken onto the same tortilla (Hint for the norteamericanos: think pizza toppings).
7. Add the remaining cheese, then cover with the second tortilla.
8. Place into the oven, baking for about 5 minutes. Flatten every few minutes by pressing down with a large spatula.
9. Flip the quesadilla.
10. Bake for another 3 minutes, until cheese is melted, and the tortillas are as crispy as you want them. Flatten again.
11. Using a knife or pizza slicer, slice, either with radial cuts, or one diametric line, and orthogonal slices about 5 cm apart.

Serve with salsa and guacamole.

Ingredient substitution:
Instead of chicken, use grilled steak, or go meatless. Ground meat is not recommended.
Instead of / in addition to the poblano: tomato, onion, jalapeno, mushroom.

As an alternative to Cordelia's instructions, I present...

Dan's No-Fail* Chicken Quesadilla Recipie

*this is not guaranteed not to fail.

Ingredients

• Chicken; we used two average-sized breasts to make 10 quesadillas using this method the first time, but in retrospect, I would have used four. Two is enough, but I like meat, so this is up to you. Exclude this if you are vegetarian.
• Flour tortillas - one per quesadilla (we used ten rather easily, but it took three people two days to finish them)
• Butter or margarine
• Cheese; We bought a bag of shredded cheese that had monterey jack, peppercorn (I think), cheddar, mozzarella, and something else. Your tastes may very; use edam if you wish, I don't care.
• Green peppers, red peppers, yellow peppers, etc; we use green and red
• Green onions
• A tomato you likely won't use it all
• Anything else you might want mixed in with the above
• A frypan you can fit a tortilla entirely in

Procedure

1. Cook the chicken, THOROUGHLY. Grill it if you like. Salmonella is no fun.
2. Chop all the vegges up. I'd suggest cutting the vegetables to about 1/2-1/3 centimetre in the longest direction. You may want them minced, you may want them diced, I have no idea.
3. Chop up the chicken. Again, this depends on your preference, but I find that 1/2-1/3 centimetre cubes or whatever will work well.
4. Mix the chicken with the vegetables in a bowl of some kind. Stir it up, you're making a mix.
5. Heat up the frypan; medium heat should suffice

   After this next step, you will have to act rather quickly if you do not want overly-done quesadillas

6. Butter/margarine both sides of a tortilla, and drop it flat into the frypan.
7. Sprinkle some cheese around half of the tortilla (be as liberal as you like, but keep in mind how much cheese you have); do likewise with the chicken/veggie mix you made (on the same side), and then top with more cheese. It is practical to pay attention to the outside edge of the tortilla, so that when the cheese melts, it can act as a glueto keep the edges together in the next step
8. Fold the tortilla in half using a spatula or something, so you end up with a semicircle.
9. Leave the tortilla in long enough to brown (as slightly as you wish); don't forget to flip it over once or twice to try and keep it even
10. Take the quesadilla out, and cut into two/three/four/eighty pie-pieces
11. Repeat until tortillas, veggies, or whatever is exhausted

Serving suggestions

Serve with traditional condiments - salsa, sour cream, refried beans, guacamole, or whatever you please. The former two are my favourites, but YMMV.

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It is beneficial to have two people doing this. One can make the quesadillas, and the other can cut the finished ones and butter the next tortilla.

Also, if my directions seem often vague, that is intentional. Cooking is not a science, it is an art. Have fun, experiment, see what you like. The benefit about making quesadillas this way is that you can try your first quesadilla while the second is cooking, and if it's not what you wanted, you can change your technique for the third, and so on. Experimentation in cooking is a common theme, of course, but with these, you can try several things in one night, not one per night, which makes discovering the ideal technique much faster.

You may wish to pick up some El Paso (or any other good brand) fajita seasoning, taco seasoning - again, experiment if you like. If you choose to add seasonings, I would suggest adding it to the chicken/veggie mix.