Once your taste buds resonate with the flavours and essence of a dish, you establish a quick association with it no matter how new and alien it was for you earlier. Just like Mexican Chicken Quesadilla which bursts with the flavourful and delicious filling of chicken and veggies. It looks like a sandwich but is a wrap made with Tortilla, a typical Mexican flatbread, used to stuff the filling. The taste of the filling lies in the recipe of marinated boneless chicken pieces with oregano and lemon juice besides some regular hot spices. Not to forget the generously sprinkled cheese that melts and oozes out of the tortillas when roasted making it a drool-worthy sight.
Quesadilla is a Mexican dish where the tortilla is stuffed with meat, spices and various veggies and sprinkled with cheese both on the first layer and on the top of the filling making it extremely creamy and rich to savour. The name of the dish comes from the Spanish word Quesada, meaning cheese and Quesadilla is the diminutive form of the word. Conventionally, there are two classic ways of making the dish, where a full quesadilla is made with two tortillas that hold a layer of cheese between them. The other one is where a single tortilla is filled with cheese and folded into a semi-circle.
The description of Quesadilla is incomplete without Tortillas, which contain these fillings. So a Tortilla is a thin and circular unleavened flatbread typically made with maize flour and even wheat flour.
Preparation: 40 minutes
Cooking: 25 minutes
Servings: 3-4 Quesadillas
Ingredients:
3-4 Tortilla or Refined flour chapatis
For marinating and frying chicken:
½ kg boneless chicken pieces
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp black pepper powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp oregano
Salt to taste
1 tbsp garlic-ginger-chilli paste
6 tbsp oil
For fillings:
2 tbsp oil
2 medium-sized capsicum (chopped)
2 medium-sized onions( sliced)
½ cup sweet corn
½ tsp chilli flakes
½ tsp oregano
¼ tsp back pepper powder
Salt to taste.
Method:
Wash the boneless chicken pieces thoroughly and take them to a bowl
Add 1 tbsp lemon juice to it, and all the powdered spices, garlic ginger and green chilli paste to it. Mix everything well with chicken using your hands
Leave it to marinade for ½ an hour
Meanwhile, heat oil in a pan, add sliced onions to it and fry until they soften
Then add chopped capsicum, and saute for 2-3 minutes with onions
Then add sweet corn and saute for a couple of minutes
Then add all the spices and salt to it and stir for 2-3 minutes
Cover and cook for another 2 minutes on low heat and turn off the flame
In another pan, heat 6 tbsp oil and fry the marinated chicken pieces in it on both sides until golden and crisp
Take it out and let it cool. Then cut these chickens into small pieces
Now spread a tortilla or refined flour-made bread on a plate and spread grated cheese on half of this tortilla
Then add cooked veggies and top it with chicken pieces and sprinkle with cheese. Then fold this tortilla from the other side like a semi-circle
Then roast this tortilla in little oil on a frying pan, until lightly golden on both sides
There’s nothing to be scared of about exotic Tortillas, as they can be made at home too by kneading refined flour, ghee, and salt into a soft dough, rolling them like chapati and roasting them on tawa.