The quesadilla, according to chef Enrique Olvera, is “the simplest of pleasures”, and is described by Rick Bayless as “the grilled cheese sandwich of Mexico” – though, perhaps surprisingly, despite their name, these toasted tortillas don’t always contain cheese. Whatever’s inside, however, they’re the perfect quick feast, as much like an empanada or pasty as a mere sandwich, and best enjoyed hot from the grill with a lick of salsa and a second already on its way. But if you don’t have a taco stall handy, churning out handmade tortillas faster than you can eat them, what’s the closest to heaven you can get at home?
The tortilla
These North and Central American flatbreads are the thing on which your quesadillas stand or slump. In the north of Mexico, they’re often, though not always, made with wheat flour, while in the south, corn is far more prevalent – which type you opt for ought to be a matter of taste, but for most of us in the UK, it isn’t, because although I can buy 14 different kinds of “wrap” at my local supermarket, the only one that contains any corn at all also contains twice as much wheat.
Fortunately, as I happen to prefer the flavour and texture of corn tortillas, they’re available online in a variety of colours (well, blue and white, anyway) and sizes, and they occasionally pop up in the “free-from” sections of larger supermarkets, thanks to their lack of gluten. Olvera recommends 15cm wraps in his contribution to Vice’s book Munchies: Late-Night Meals from the World’s Best Chefs, while over at Serious Eats J Kenji López-Alt suggests 14cm flour wraps. Any bigger, and they become unwieldy for the amateur quesadilla cook, though if you go to Los Machetes Amparito in Mexico City, you’ll see them cooking up giant versions in 70cm tortillas.
But not so fast: “Though you can make quesadillas with ready-made corn tortillas folded over melting cheese and coated on a griddle,” Bayless writes in his book Mexican Kitchen, “I prefer making them with homemade tortillas, as they do through central and southern Mexico”. Olvera concurs in his own book, Tu Casa Mi Casa, as does Diana Kennedy in The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. Despite this heavyweight support, it cannot be denied that making your own tortillas is more of a faff than ordering them online, but it’s not an altogether pointless one. For a start, once you’ve bought the masa harina, or nixtamalised ground corn, you’ll be within half an hour of fresh corn tortillas wherever you live (though a tortilla press would also come in helpful). Second, Laura Reyes-Montiel, a “Mexican Mancunian”, helpfully advises me on Twitter that this means “you can make them a little bit thicker than the ready-made tortillas”, so they get “crunchy on the outside, while [staying] a bit soft inside – yum!”
Nud Dudhia of Breddo’s Tacos agrees that the hand-pressed tortillas used in most food stalls never get as thin as the machine-made kind, which makes these crisp, yet soft and ever-so-slightly doughy versions stupidly delicious, even in my incompetent hands. Fresh corn tortillas are also easier to seal up like empanadas, as Kennedy and Bayless instruct their readers to do.
The cheese
In Mexico, quesadillas are ready “in five minutes, the classic and ubiquitous dish that you make for yourself at home when you don’t feel like cooking an elaborate meal, but want a feast for yourself”, as Olvera puts it. But it’s quickly becoming apparent that here, they have the potential to take rather longer to put together. Chef Santiago Lastra, whose first solo venture, Kol, opens in London next spring, tells me that “the perfect quesadilla would be made from scratch using fresh Oaxaca cheese, a Mexican type of string cheese – in fact, we make [it] in Kent [with] a farmer named Jeremy – and freshly made heritage corn masa. When you have the right ingredients,” Lastra reassures me, “the process is quite simple.”
You can find masa harina here, but unless you also happen to be a farmer named Jeremy (or Lastra begins selling the cheese), it’s now impossible to find Oaxaca-style cheese in the UK: the only British producer, Gringa Dairy, recently shut up shop. Opinions as to the best substitute vary, to put it politely – Gringa’s Kristen Schnepp says “an extremely mild, cornershop cheddar can be OK, but it’s best to mix it with mozzarella. Mozzarella alone is too bland.” She also suggests trying monterey jack, which Olvera and Bayless also concede is an option if you can’t get Oaxacan cheese, while López-Alt recommends “Swiss cheese”.
Mozzarella is a popular choice, because, as Kennedy notes, a cheese that “‘strings’ nicely …is a Mexican requirement”. (She suggests chihuahua cheese, which is another one that’s disappeared from our landscape along with Gringa, though I get one of the last blocks and can confirm it would have been a good choice in happier times). That said, moisture is your enemy here – soggy tortillas are for chilaquiles – so this isn’t a time for balls of fresh buffalo mozzarella; seek out the blocks sold for cooking, or, if you can find it, the ready-grated kind, which, tossed with potato starch, is driest of all.
Mexican-Irish food writer Lily Ramirez-Foran, of Dublin’s Picado Mexican, says she loves using gubbeen or extra-mature Irish cheddar, “but if I’m super-stuck [with] only supermarket cheese, I do 60% mozzarella to 40% cheddar”. Others, including Marlene Spieler, author of several books on Mexican cooking, suggest lancashire, edam and even red leicester.
As far as I’m concerned at least, there is no such thing as bad melted cheese, and my testers and I enjoyed all of the above. In fact, we found ourselves in profound disagreement over the merits of mature versus mild cheddar as a partner for mozzarella. This is my column, however, and I preferred the mild sort, because it is, as Schnepp says, less oily when melted. It’s also less emphatically cheesy – and my memory of Oaxacan cheese is that the flavour is more milky, and faintly salty, which makes mild cheddar, or monterey jack, if you can find it, a better choice than anything too strong.
Even better, however, in my opinion at least, is the mixture of mozzarella and halloumi favoured by Reyes-Montiel. Halloumi, of course, doesn’t melt, but it does have the right kind of flavour, if somewhat saltier, though that’s easily balanced by bland mozzarella. Chef and restaurateur Victor Garvey tweets that, according to “a Mexican foodie friend of mine … the cheese in a quesadilla should be the binder of everything and not the main flavour” – and this mixture is, for me, the perfect stringy glue, fulfilling food writer Nicola Miller’s requirement that the cheese should stretch out “like the strings of a harp” (which, I admit, is a lot more appetising than “stringy glue”). I also try mixing the mozzarella with havarti, as suggested by Lara Q on Twitter, who remembers being recommended it by Mexican friends in Canada, which also does the job, although it’s slightly sweeter than the halloumi.
In short, if you’ve made it this far, mozzarella is a must for the Oaxaca-deprived – I prefer to mix it with halloumi, but you could also use mild cheddar, or havarti, or monterey jack, depending on your taste and what you have to hand. This is casual food, after all.
Other fillings
Having waxed on about cheese at some length, I won’t dwell on other possibilities – as Bayless explains, “quesadillas can take practically any filling you are drawn to”.
Dudhia tells me that “in Mexico, the classic pairing is with courgette flowers and perhaps some poblano chilli sautéed with epazote … you also find many traders selling quesadillas filled with huitlacoche (corn smut/fungus) which you only get in Mexico, or chorizo or potatoes”. Lastra adds: “the stuffing should always be seasonal. I love to make a quesadillas filled with wild porcini mushrooms, smoked bone marrow, roasted pumpkin and a touch of wild kale with a salsa made with pumpkin seeds, cherry tomato and arbol chilli.”
That sounds a bit too ambitious for me, but I do try chorizo and potatoes from Kennedy’s book, spinach and black beans from López-Alt, and Bayless’ quesadillas with roasted poblano chilli “rajas” (strips of roast pepper sauteed with onion, garlic and dried epazote). All are, of course, delicious, but whatever you go for, heed López-Alt’s advice and “cut, chop, or shred the fillings into bite-sized pieces before tossing them together with the shredded cheese, so that everything forms a single, cohesive filling when the quesadilla cooks. Think of it,” he adds, “as the cosmic oneness theory of quesadillas.” I’d add, as with the cheese, just make sure that whatever you choose is as dry as possible – drain off excess grease from sauteed chorizo, wring out wilted spinach, drain beans thoroughly, leave boiled potatoes to steam a while, and so on.
For a basic quesadilla, however, a few slices of crunchy jalapeño, and a little epazote, a slightly bitter, grassy herb with, according to the Cool Chile Co “a whiff of pencil sharpenings”, will do nicely – after all, if it’s good enough for Olvera, whose Mexico City restaurant, Pujol, is currently ranked 20th in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, it’s good enough for me after a night out.
The method
More important is the way you cook it. I discover early on that the way I’ve always made quesadillas is wrong – rather than sandwiching two tortillas together with filling and flipping them over with a plate, it’s far easier to fold the tortilla itself over the filling, to make a half-moon, pasty shape, which you can then seal if you happen to have fresh tortillas. Don’t be tempted to overfill them; contrary to pictures found on certain social media sites, quesadillas should not be spilling over with molten cheese and sausage (or, indeed, macaroni cheese and Cheetos); rather, they should be fairly flat or they’ll be hard to eat.
López-Alt recommends frying the tortilla in “plenty of oil” (or lard), which means “even if the quesadilla pushes away a little, it’ll still be in contact with that oil, ensuring good browning and crisping all over its surface”. This is true, but we find them too crispy for our taste: a quesadilla ought to be have a slightly crunchy outside, but these are almost more like stuffed tortilla chips (though deep-fried quesadillas are popular in Mexico City, so if the idea floats your boat, be my guest).
Ideally, however, you’d cook them on a greased, flat, cast-iron griddle (if you don’t have one of those,a heavy-based frying pan will do) over a fairly low heat, “to build up a good crust on the tortilla while the cheese mix ingredients inside get to know each other”, as Dudhia puts it. Eat immediately, or put in a low oven to keep warm while you make the rest – but don’t leave them for too long, or I’ll have to come round and have a word.
Perfect quesadillas
Prep 5 min
Cook 4 min each
Makes 8
80g cooking mozzarella, preferably ready-grated
48g halloumi, mild cheddar, monterey jack or havarti, grated
8 corn or flour tortillas, about 15cm
2 green jalapeño chillies, cut into rounds
1 tsp dried epazote or oregano (preferably Mexican)
To serve
Salsa and soured cream or crumbled lancashire cheese and shredded iceberg lettuce
Mix the two cheeses in a bowl. Heat a well-greased, flat, cast-iron griddle or heavy-based frying pan on a medium-low heat. Once it’s hot, lay in a tortilla and sprinkle with two tablespoons of the cheese mix, making sure you leave a decent border all around the edge.
When the cheese begins to melt, add a few slices of chilli and a pinch of epazote (or oregano), and fold over the tortilla, pressing it down to help seal it. (At this point, if there’s room in the pan, start cooking the next quesadilla now.)
Continue to cook until golden, then carefully turn over and repeat on the other side. Serve with salsa and soured cream or sprinkled with crumbled lancashire cheese and shredded iceberg lettuce, as you like.
• Quesadillas: corn or flour, cheese or cheese-less, deep-fried or griddled – how do you like yours, and what’s the best substitute for Mexican cheese? And can anyone tells me why it’s still so difficult to find corn tortillas in British supermarkets?
