Julie & Julia & Jury Duty
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the Crab Leg Challenge 
Tomatoes? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Tomatoes!
12/20/05 11:02 PM
Good Recipe!
I am coming up on the biggest cooking extravaganza of my
year: Christmas. I will be cooking straight from 22nd through 27th
for a total of 55 people (ok, for one of the events, I’m only bringing one
dessert to a potluck of 21 guests- but the rest are mine!) I’m getting my lists
ready, and I know I will checking them twice because the grocery stores these
days are enough to trample the holiday spirit out of anyone.
With all the cooking coming up, I’m trying to lay low for these next few days and not get myself tired out. Tonight we ordered out some sushi, last night I made some quesadillas:
I could go through the long drawn out recipe for these quesadillas (they were in the January issue of Food and Wine), but we all know how to make quesadillas- it just depends what you want to put in them- cheese, chicken, beans, whatever. But what I do want to talk about is the salsa they suggested to go a top these quesadillas. No tomatoes? That's right, no tomatoes in this salsa- and nobody got hurt. It was fresh and had just enough heat for someone who likes a mild topping with a little bit of sweetness. Actually a lot of sweetness if you get a good mango:
1 scallion- cut into ½ inch pieces
Juice of one lime
¼ c. chopped cilantro
This is from "Taste" by David Rosengarten, one of my favorite cookbooks - but then I only need one recipe to consider a cookbook a success.
Special Quesadilla Techiques
"There are two special challenges in cooking quesadillas in a skillet or on a griddle.
First of all you want the finished texture of the outside to be slightly crisp from the heat, but the tortillas should retain some of their softness. My solution is to sprinkle a little water on each side of the tortilla before you put it in the pan; this prevents extreme crisping and leads to a lovely crisp-tender texture. [It does!]
Second you must have a good feeling for heat when cooking quesadillas. If the pan is too hot, the outsides of the quesadilla will burn. If it's too cool, the cheese won't melt quickly enough, and the outsides of the quesadilla will turn crunchy by the time the cheese melts. I use medium-high heat and always press the quesadilla with the spatula to spped up the melting of the cheese. I check after a minute or two and, if I see the cheese melting nicely, I flip the quesadilla over for another minute of two.
As soon as the quesadilla is fully melted, the quesadilla is ready.
By the way, I once discovered by accident a little trick that makes quesadillas taste even better. If, after your quesdilla is in the pan, you sprinkle just a little bit of cheese on the edge of it, all around the circle, the quesdilla ends up with a lovely, brown, cheesy, slightly crunchy, rim. [It does!]"
My favorite, not-to-much-cooking, quesadilla is jack cheese, canned diced green chiles, and shrimp on a flour tortilla. Would be wonderful with the mango salsa.
Posted by: lindata | December 21, 2005 at 08:24 AM