Recipe for quesedillas on corn tortilla, a street vendor favorite...

Quesedillas make the perfect food to eat while watching a football game, NASCAR race, Mexican soap opera, or Court TV. Basically, they're the Mexican version of a cheese sandwich, grilled to a crispy texture. You can easily turn them into a main dish by adding meat to the mixture, or adding additional cheese. This recipe features the version that I like to prepare for light meal, or a snack.

Left: Ingredients for quesedillas include cheese, Hass avocado, cilantro, Roma tomatoes, white onions and jalapeno peppers. Quanties of ingredients aren't the least little bit critical. Right: Ingredients are mixed and ready to be applied to a corn tortilla.

Special Tools: George Foreman grill, any grill, comal or cast iron frying pan will work
Preparation time: About 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 4 - 5 minutes
Yield: 1 generous serving or two "smaller" servings

4 small corn tortillas, about 5-1/2" in diameter
1/2 medium onion, white variety preferred, diced
2 jalapeno chili peppers, diced
1/4 cup diced cilantro
1/2 Hass avocado, sliced, diced and mashed
1/2 cup shredded Mexican cheese, 4 or 5-cheese blend
1 firm tomato, diced, preferably Roma
1/2 sliced lemon or lime, optional

Heat grill. Dice onion, peppers, tomato, avocado mixture and cheese, set aside. Mix ingredients together and set aside. Place two tortillas on cutting board, spoon mixture, evenly divided on each tortilla, and spread evenly over surface of tortilla. Place second tortilla over mixture and press down with palms of your hand, ensuring that mixture is even divided. Place in grill and cook, about 5 minutes until grill marks appear. Remove from heat. Cut into quarters and serve immediately.

Left: Ingredients are spread evenly over one of the tortillas. Right: The second tortilla is placed on top of the mixture, and flattened evenly with the palm of the hand. Now they're ready for the grill...

Quesadillas make an excellent snack or a light meal. If you want to make quesadillas a main dish, add any kind of shredded, cooked meat to the mixture and you'll have a complete meal. We prefer to add chicken, turkey or pork, but any meat will do. Feel free to substitute ingredients.

Left: Quesedillas are ready to remove from the grill. Notice the golden brown texture and the grill marks. Right: Garnished with lemon slices and quartered, quesedillas are ready to eat. The tortillas should be somewhat "crunchy" in texture.

I'm a big fan of outdoor grilling, since outdoor grilling utilizes wood smoke, which tends to implant a smoky taste into food. However with quesedillas, since the cooking time is so short, the smoke doesn't have a chance to permeate the food, so you can't tell the difference between cooking your quesedilla outdoors, or indoor, on your George Foreman grill.

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