Quesadillas and Merlot

Although I've lived in Texas for the last 11.5 years, I have never made a Mexican dish. I've eaten it plenty of times, but I've not ventured into the kitchen once with the intent of making my own Mexican concoction. And so, on my trip to visit Sweta, I thought: "why not try it now?"

 

And so, our adventure began. First, we had to choose what exactly we wanted to make. Not wanting to try something too intricate, we decided to stick with quesadillas. Yes, they're usually served as an appetizer in restaurants, and no, they're not very hard to make... or so one would think. Turns out, our quesadilla dinner turned into a supper by the time we got all the ingredients and mastered the art of making them (successfully).

 

Not wanting to make quesadillas that were completely uninspired in terms of ingredients, we decided to include all the healthy goodness we could. So our shopping list included:

• tortillas
• cheese (note to anyone else who didn't know: you can ask to sample cheeses at the deli counter; also, through my many years of making friends with deli workers, my advice is to get your meats sliced on 1 for sandwiches and 2 for cheeses; and although not all deli places advertise the cutting sizes for their meats and cheeses like HEB does, the sizes I gave you are pretty universal)
• oven roasted chicken breast (sliced on 7 -- perfect size for grilling and putting into salads.. and quesadillas, too)
• corn
• red bell pepper
• green bell pepper
• onion
• spinach
• avocado (which we forgot to add in by the end... oops)
• pineapple (as a healthy dessert... or in our case, healthy brunch the next day)

After cleaning up in the kitchen and preparing our work area, we began our adventure. Lessons learned in the kitchen that night:

• If you don't put oil or Pam in a pan before throwing a tortilla on there, it will blacken and smoke will come from the kitchen area.
• You need to turn the tortilla over on both sides while making quesadillas to ensure excellent taste.
• Sometimes the tortillas will rise up. I haven't figured out why this happens, but we stabbed the air bubbles that formed with a knife.
• Cheese is a the main ingredient in quesadillas. Make sure you add plenty, especially if you want to actually close the quesadillas on the edges.
• Drinking Merlot while making quesadillas will make all of the above lessons much more fun.

 

And here are the pictures...

 

Here is the very first quesadilla. Notice the charcoal appearance. Sweta said it was delicious, though.

 

And then, by the time we made the fourth one, there was great improvement, as the picture shows! Huge learning curve, if I may say so myself... Biggest lesson of the night: Don't be afraid to try something new.