When you have the right ingredients,” Lastra reassures me, “the process is quite simple.” Chef Santiago Lastra, whose first solo venture, Kol, opens in London next spring, tells me that “the perfect quesadilla would be made from scratch using fresh Oaxaca cheese, a Mexican type of string cheese – in fact, we make in Kent a farmer named Jeremy – and freshly made heritage corn masa. But it’s quickly becoming apparent that here, they have the potential to take rather longer to put together. In Mexico, quesadillas are ready “in five minutes, the classic and ubiquitous dish that you make for yourself at home when you don’t feel like cooking an elaborate meal, but want a feast for yourself”, as Olvera puts it. ‘We tried a lot of cheese,’ says Felicity. Fresh corn tortillas are also easier to seal up like empanadas, as Kennedy and Bayless instruct their readers to do. Nud Dudhia of Breddo’s Tacos agrees that the hand-pressed tortillas used in most food stalls never get as thin as the machine-made kind, which makes these crisp, yet soft and ever-so-slightly doughy versions stupidly delicious, even in my incompetent hands. Second, Laura Reyes-Montiel, a “Mexican Mancunian”, helpfully advises me on Twitter that this means “you can make them a little bit thicker than the ready-made tortillas”, so they get “crunchy on the outside, while a bit soft inside – yum!” For a start, once you’ve bought the masa harina, or nixtamalised ground corn, you’ll be within half an hour of fresh corn tortillas wherever you live (though a tortilla press would also come in helpful). Despite this heavyweight support, it cannot be denied that making your own tortillas is more of a faff than ordering them online, but it’s not an altogether pointless one. Olvera concurs in his own book, Tu Casa Mi Casa, as does Diana Kennedy in The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. Any bigger, and they become unwieldy for the amateur quesadilla cook, though if you go to Los Machetes Amparito in Mexico City, you’ll see them cooking up giant versions in 70cm tortillas.īut not so fast: “Though you can make quesadillas with ready-made corn tortillas folded over melting cheese and coated on a griddle,” Bayless writes in his book Mexican Kitchen, “I prefer making them with homemade tortillas, as they do through central and southern Mexico”. Olvera recommends 15cm wraps in his contribution to Vice’s book Munchies: Late-Night Meals from the World’s Best Chefs, while over at Serious Eats J Kenji López-Alt suggests 14cm flour wraps. In the north of Mexico, they’re often, though not always, made with wheat flour, while in the south, corn is far more prevalent – which type you opt for ought to be a matter of taste, but for most of us in the UK, it isn’t, because although I can buy 14 different kinds of “wrap” at my local supermarket, the only one that contains any corn at all also contains twice as much wheat.įortunately, as I happen to prefer the flavour and texture of corn tortillas, they’re available online in a variety of colours (well, blue and white, anyway) and sizes, and they occasionally pop up in the “free-from” sections of larger supermarkets, thanks to their lack of gluten. Cook the other side until it browns (approx 2 minutes) and then slice them up in quarters and serve with PAPAYA SALSA.These North and Central American flatbreads are the thing on which your quesadillas stand or slump. Throw the pair of quesadillas in the pan and cook them up, flipping when the pan-side browns (approx 3 minutes). Press each tortilla down so the ingredients smoosh together. Heat up the olive oil in a nonstick pan on medium heat. Ain’t no stopping you from getting some peace…of ass.Īssemble two quesadillas by throwing a handful of jack cheese, ½ handful of chopped cilantro, pull half the meat off a chicken drumstick in pieces, half the chopped mango and a pinch of salt on one side of each open tortilla. Aren’t the whiners the most satisfying to bang senseless? It’s like wearing out their motor mouths by stuffing they with the tastiest of treats. You deserve to make something ridiculously easy that earns you props from the prissy crowd who “don’t usually indulge in such low brow foods.” So long as they put out after they are put in their place I am down to put up with them. So we can afford to indulge in a little turbocharged bar food every once in a while. Who’s afraid of getting fat? Not I, says the COOK TO BANG chefs who cook healthy, badass food, and then subsequently burn off those calories banging like chimpanzees on meth.

Chicken mango salsa quesadilla recipe