Who doesn’t love quesadillas?

Until recently, I have been totally out of the habit of making quesadillas. I used to make them all the time but I think I got sick of making the bean mix for it. I used to spend hours slaving away to make the perfect slow cooked beans. After a while the novelty started to ware off and I moved onto the next thing. During the seemingly never ending lockdown here in Melbourne my very talented friend Anna Augustine started introducing Margarita and Mexican Saturday into her life. With each day blurring into one endless repetitive day I thought this was a pretty damn excellent idea. Something to look forward to and remind me that it is actually the weekend.

So it was time to get a bit of quesadilla love back in my life. But the thought of spending ages making the beans and writing up the recipe floating around in my head did not excite me. I decided to make a much simpler version. Not sure why it took me this long to have this idea. Really, Quesadillas should be a quick and easy and I had turned them into an ordeal. So this is the simple version, which to my annoyance tastes juts as good as the old version. I just have to not think about all that time I wasted slaving over a hot pot of beans when I could have been doing it the easy way the entire time.

Anyway, focusing on the positives, I really love this recipe and it is so easy to make. You can still of course soak and slow cook the beans but for this recipe, but I use canned pinto beans – the best beans for Mexican cooking in my opinion. I actually love them so much I briefly (very briefly!) considered naming my first-born Pinto. I thought it had a nice ring to it but my partner quickly vetoed it. With the benefit of hindsight, he was probably right. Anyway, I only just discovered you can buy canned pinto beans from the Mexican section of the supermarket which I found rather exciting. Kidney beans would probably be my next choice if pinto are not available. Whilst the beans are yummy, they are really just an excuse to eat bucket loads of guacamole and salsa fresca aren’t they?

I always make extra guacamole as I have learnt over the years that you can literally never have too much. Have you ever seen a half eaten bowl of guacamole? No because no matter how much you make, people will eat it. So feel free to double the amounts fro the guacamole. I use ‘creamed garlic’ for my guacamole as it reduces the raw heat and brings out its sweetness – a total game changer in my opinion. I love garlic, if you are not such a big fan I would half the amount of garlic in the guacamole.

Now go and chill your margarita glasses and get cooking!

Charred capsicum and pinto bean quesadillas with guacamole and tomato salsa

Prep time: 40 minutes

Makes: 8 quesadillas

Dietary guide: Gluten free. Vegan and dairy free variation provided.

Ingredients

1 brown onion

2 cloves of garlic crushed

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 ¼ teaspoon of smoked paprika

1 ¼ teaspoon of ground cumin

1 teaspoon of ground coriander

Pinch of cinnamon

1 stock cube (and a cup of water) or 1 cup of stock

1 ½ tablespoons of tomato paste

¼ cup of dry white wine

1 teaspoon of sugar or maple syrup

½ teaspoon of lemon juice

2 x cans of pinto beans (can substitute with kidney or black beans)

1 small red capsicum

120g of a good melting cheese such Manchego, Monterey Jack grated or whatever you have available

8 small flour or corn tortillas

2 avocados

1 teaspoon of creamed garlic – see instructions at the bottom of the page

4 teaspoons of lime juice

1 small bunch of coriander

3 ripe tomatoes

1 golden shallot or ½ a red onion

1 jalapeno – optional

Extra olive oil for pan-frying

Method

1). First make the beans. Peel and chop the brown onion and place in a medium saucepan with the tablespoon of olive oil. Cook over medium heat for about five minutes. Add the crushed garlic, turn the heat down low and cook for another five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the cumin, cinnamon, coriander and smoked paprika and cook stirring frequently for a further five minutes. Add the tomato paste and white wine and cook until the wine has reduced. Add the drained beans, stock cube and 1 cup of water (or 1 cup of stock) and sugar. Simmer the beans on a medium heat - stirring often.

Meanwhile heat a fry pan on high with a good splash of olive oil. Chop the capsicum into small cubes and fry, stirring frequently for about five minutes or until they start to colour. Add the capsicum to the simmering bean mix. The beans are ready when they have reached a thick stew consistency (about 15 minutes). You don’t want the bean mix too thin, as it will fall out of the quesadilla when you are cooking them.

2). Prepare the salsa fresca. Deseed and chop the tomatoes and place in a medium bowl. Thoroughly wash and dry the coriander removing any large stems and roughly chop. Reserve 1/3 of the coriander for the guacamole and add the rest to the bowl with the tomatoes. Finely chop the shallot/onion and add to the tomatoes along with half the lime juice (2 teaspoons), fresh black pepper and salt. You can also add some chopped fresh jalapenos if you like it hot. Mix to combine, test and adjust for seasoning and set aside.

3). For the guacamole, scoop out the flesh of the avocados and add it to a medium bowl along with the creamed garlic (recipe at the bottom of the page), remaining lime juice (2 teaspoons) and coriander, some fresh pepper and a pinch of salt. The creamed garlic has salt in it so don’t go too crazy with adding extra salt until you have tried it. Give it a rough mix with a fork and break the avocado up a bit, but not too much – it should be chunky not pureed. Taste and check if it’s got enough lime juice, salt, garlic etc. enough for your taste. When you are happy, set aside.

4). Time to prepare the quesadillas. Preheat a fry pan on medium-low heat. Scoop about 2 tablespoons of the bean mix onto one half of each tortilla and spread out evenly. Top with 1/8 of the grated cheese and fold over to make a pocket. Drizzle the pan with a little olive oil and fry the quesadillas in batches, carefully turning over half way through. They will take about 3 minutes per side. Serve on a large serving platter with the guacamole, salsa fresca, some fresh chilli and extra fresh lime wedges.

How to make creamed garlic: The reason I use this instead of chopped up or minced garlic, when a recipe calls for raw garlic is that this method reduces the heat and intensity of raw garlic. This means I can use more garlic and get more garlic flavor into it without it being quite as full on. To cream garlic place 2- clove of nice and fresh peeled garlic in a mortar. Add 1 very generous teaspoon of nice quality salt and grind up with the pestle. It might sound like a lot of salt but the garlic helps to retard its saltiness.

Once its pretty smooshed up and like a rough paste, add two teaspoons of olive oil and continue grinding and mixing until you have a nice nearly smooth paste. Ready to use. It’s best used in the first couple of hours but you can cover it with oil and keep it for a day if you need to. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you can do this on a chopping board using the back of a metal spoon. It will just test you patients a bit more.