Frugality is not my best thing. I like buying food too much. Nevertheless, frugality is what I'm trying to force myself into at the moment.
If you've ever read my other Blog (21 Days of Positivity), then you may know that one of my New Year's Resolutions is to try to get better about using food up. With that in mind, I scoured through my cookbook collection until I found mention of at least one of the ingredients I was hoping to shift. Jamie Oliver to the rescue with his suggestion of quesadillas. He uses more ingredients than I had access to (or wished to purchase), so I went with the idea, and decided to make it my own.
I remembered my favourite late night snack after I'd been out partying a few years ago (when I lived in a flat by myself - this is not something I'd do with flatmates around, too antisocial at 3am). It was sort of a cheat's quesadilla (a cheatsadilla?) of a tortilla folded in half and stuffed with grated cheddar and half a tin of tuna. Scrummy, but mouth burny if you're a bit the worse for wear and have forgotten how hot hot cheese can be. Cue waking up the next morning wondering why you've got no skin on the roof of your mouth... anyway...
I decided to have a look at what I had to work with:
A very sad little lump of ageing cheddar.
A couple of extremely stale tortillas.
A tin of tuna.
A couple of fat red chillis.
Cherry tomatoes.
I elected to pop to the shops and buy one extra ingredient. Otherwise the mixture would have been far too rich. I bought a bunch of spring onions.
Here is what I used:
For the quesadilla
Approx 50g cheddar, very finely grated.
1/2 red chilli, deseeded and chopped finely.
3 spring onions, thinly sliced into little rounds - the green part can be cut a little more coarsely, but the white should be very thin indeed.
1 can of tuna in oil (oil drained and disposed of) (use sustainably sourced tuna that avoids harming other sea life as much as possible. If you don't, I'll know).
A pinch of ground black pepper
3 tortillas (I used 2, and had too much filling).
For blackened chilli-cherry tomatoes
24 cherry tomatoes, halved.
1tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
a pinch of ground black pepper (coarse)
a pinch of sea salt
For serving, you could have guacamole and some soured cream on hand.
Here is what I did:
I preheated the oven to 180 degrees C.
I tossed the tomato halves in the olive oil, cayenne, salt and pepper, and laid them out face down on a baking tray that I don't mind about. If you are short on time, you could fry them as well.
I put them into the oven and left them there for about 20 minutes (start the quesadillas before your 20 minutes is up) until the skins were blackened and there was a pleasing, chilli caramel on the bottom of the tin. I happen to like the blackened skin, but I'm pretty sure it's full of carcinogens (thanks, whichever paper has put the world off deliciously burnt things), so if you're feeling healthy and wholesome, or feeding it to persons younger than yourself, you might want to pick them off. They go quite crisp, so it should be easy.
I mixed all the ingredients for the quesadilla filling together in a bowl - pretty thoroughly. Don't worry that the cheese seems to vanish with the oil of the tuna. It still does its job and goes all gooey and crispy at the edges. It also glues everything together nicely.
After the tomatoes had been in the oven for about 15 minutes, what I should have done* is divided the quesadilla filling between three tortillas, putting it on only one half of the bread, and then folding the un-filled half of it over on top.
What I should have done next is cooked each of my 3 quesadillas one at a time in a dry frying pan on quite a high heat. I would have used a fish slice to flip each quesadilla when the bread against the pan had begun to brown.
Once you've got your quesadillas brown and crispy on the outside, and gooey and delicious and hopefully leaking a little to form crispy extra bits on the edges, you can cut them into thirds or quarters, and pile them up for people to grab and munch on. Put the tomatoes in a pot by the side. If you've gone for guacamole and soured cream, stick them alongside, too. Yum.
I overestimated the amount of food I can eat, so this was a LOT for one person (except I had half the amount of tomatoes, no extra sides and 2 tortillas, not 3). Nevertheless, it was so yummy that I ate it all anyway. So that's a plus. I am now feeling excessively well-fed.
I'd serve this again if I were drinking zingy apple and ginger mocktails and watching a silly film on tv. It's quick, low mess and should be a pretty easy crowd pleaser. I am looking forward to having occasion to test drive these on friends soon.
Happy eating, and have a lovely weekend.
* I did not do this. I just put a tortilla flat, put all the filling on it and then put the other one on top. Error. What I also did not do is pre-divide my stupidly large flat rounds of quesadilla. So not only were they all open edges, there was also way too much surface area to flip and too much filling weighing it down. Mid flip, using a too-small spatula, my quesadilla decided to fall apart and I ended up with half the filling in the frying pan, burning away. So I had to take the lot out, put my uncooked tortilla on the pan after I'd scraped the worst of it out, get it back on the heat, refill it and then top it with my now cooling crispy top one. It wasn't a disaster, but it was a faff that could have been averted with a little common sense.
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