Red and Green Bean and Cheese Quesadillas with Sweet Potato Salsa

From New Vegetarian, Robin Asbell, Chronicle Books, 2009.

I seem to have been obsessed with Mexican flavours lately but there has been a gap from them for I have been holidaying in Kakadu and Darwin and eating out. But what’s the first thing I make when I return to Sydney and begin cooking again: Mexican food.

These quesadillas sounded interesting to me as they did not have the usual filling and the sweet potato salsa definitely sounded to be very different.

For the salsa I cooked a cup of sweet potato and placed it into a blender. To it I added a peeled garlic clove, about half a cup of coriander leaves, 2 tablespoons lime juice, 2 tablespoons olive oil, a good pinch of chilli flakes and salt. The ingredients were churned, tasted for seasoning (a little more salt added) and placed in a bowl for serving. Despite my doubt this turned out to be a really tasty salsa.

For the quesadilla filling, I placed in a bowl ½ cup edamame and ½ cup red beans (the recipe called for black soya beans but I did not have them so used a can of Mexican beans which were in a sauce). With a fork I mashed the beans just a little. To the two beans I added ½ teaspoon salt and about 2 teaspoons chipotle in adobo sauce, well chopped. I grated a cup and a half of tasty cheddar cheese and mixed this in.

Three 15cm tortillas were laid out and the mixture spread over them to about 1cm from the edge. Another three tortillas were placed over them. They were then fried one by one in an oiled pan for about 2 minutes per side, pressing them down a little to aid them to stick together.

I served these with the sweet potato salsa and a lemony guacamole. The salsa went perfectly with them; the guacamole was okay but not as perfect a match as the salsa. The quesadillas were full of flavour, cheesy and spicy with an occasional crunch from the edamames

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Tomato Salsa with Quesadillas and Spinach and Mushroom

From Truly Mexican, Roberto Santibañez, John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

I am very fond of Mexican food. I occasionally try to cook it but never quite seem to be able to achieve anything near the real taste. So this book, I hope, will be able to help me master something nearer to proper Mexican cuisine.

The book concentrates on the sauces and condiments giving instructions on how to achieve the best results with these. So the book is arranged into sections according to these elements: salsas, guacamoles, adobos, moles and pipianes. In each section the reader goes through a series of instructions on making the sauce or condiment. The section then ends with some recipes for using these elements in particular dishes. The author hopes that once a person has achieved success with the sauce or condiment they will be able to construct their own recipes.

The instructions are very clear and easy to follow. I began with a salsa, a pico de gallo (fresh tomato salsa). This was the easiest salsa to make. All of the ingredients were mixed together, it was seasoned and served.

This was a salsa with a great tang to it and one I think I would go back to whenever I am preparing a salsa dip for other occasions.

The recipe ends with suggestions for what to serve it with. These were generally not vegetarian so I settled on having it with quesadillas, the instructions for which were in a later section of the book. Again these were simple to make, though once again I should mention the difficulty in Sydney of obtaining corn tortillas.

As a side I made sautéed spinach and mushrooms, again from the end section of the book.

This turned out to be a very satisfying meal (salsa, quesadillas and spinach with mushrooms) with lots of flavour and spicy bite that I like.

I’ll be back into this book again soon, I think.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔