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Hi, I'm Scott Samuel, here at the Culinary Institute of America.
Today, I'm going to show you how to make a pinto bean and Monterey Jack cheese quesadilla with a salsa verde.
So, first of all, I want to talk about the pinto beans that I've cooked.
And I started with dried beans. I soaked them overnight with cold water,
and the next morning, I've cooked them with water,
one onion, and a bay leaf, and a pinch of salt.
Drained them off and here I have my cooked pinto beans.
What I want to do is make a flavorful base. So, let's talk about our ingredients. What we have here....
So I have a little bit of canola oil that I'm going to sauté up onion and garlic with it. And then I'm going to add my beans,
I'm going to add my red pepper, a little bit of a chili powder, and a bay leaf, to increase the flavor,
and then I'll cool that down, and then I'll add my grated Monterey Jack,
and a red salsa - any sort of salsa you might like -
and that will be my filling for the quesadilla.
The next thing I want to show you how to make, is a tomatillo salsa verde.
So, using fresh tomatillos, where I've taken the husks off and rinsed them, I'm going to chop these.....
and bring them to a boil with some water,
and then purée them in a blender with white onion, some garlic, some serrano pepper,
lime juice, cumin, and I'll finish it with some cilantro.
It's a great salsa to have on hand. I'll be serving that today with the quesadilla.
So, let's start with our our bean base.
So, the first thing I want to do is cook these onions down until they're soft.
And basically the sting of the onion is gone, and uh.....
.....they're slightly colored. And then I'll add my garlic. Finish cooking that.....
Another minute or so.... And then I'll add my pinto beans, that have already been cooked.
So, let's just give it about two minutes here.....
All right, then we add a couple tablespoons of minced garlic.....
Just want to build a flavorful base for the pinto beans......
So, then we have our pinto beans on hand.
And once I get this going, I'm going to move into making the tomatillo salsa.
All right, just until the garlic is translucent and starts to color.....
Add our beans..... What I want to add is my chili powder, my bay leaf,
a pinch of salt,
a small pinch of pepper.
Okay, so while these pinto beans are cooking down....
on medium low heat, I like to focus on the tomatillo salsa.
So, the first step here is taking my tomatillos, which have been rinsed....
And I'm just going to quarter them.
And add them to a pot, and I'm going to cover it with cold water, and bring it to a boil.
There's a few different ways to make a tomatillo salsa verde.
This is one, where we cook the tomatillos *first* and purée the rest of the ingredients raw,
and then add the cooked tomatillos, and a little bit of the liquid that they've cooked in....
....to make a kind of a thin salsa.
So, there we have about three cups of cut tomatillos.
And as you can see, I just want to add just enough water.....
.....to barely cover them.
And I'm going to bring this to a boil, and I'll cook it for about two minutes on a boil.
Okay, so coming back, we've brought the tomatillos to a boil,
and I'm waiting for them to kind of turn slightly translucent,
and it'll take about a minute of boiling, maybe two minutes.
Taking a look at our beans, you can see we've got some nice color.
The chili powder has......
released its aroma. And let's go ahead and do the next step....
I'm taking a roasted red pepper....
that I've roasted over a flame, and diced. You can also buy a jar of roasted red peppers.
[Chopping Sounds]
All right, here the moisture of the pepper is going
to help get all this flavor off the bottom of the pan.
And what I want to do, is take these beans out and cool them....
Oh.... for about 10 minutes......
And then I'm going to add my red salsa, my grated cheese,
and I'm going to go ahead and chop up my green onions.
So let me put this in the chiller for a minute.
Okay, so these tomatillos have boiled for about two minutes,
and I can see they're like translucent.
I'm going to drain them off. This will be the body of my salsa.
I do want to reserve the liquid. I'll be using, some of it to purée the salsa. So....
Go ahead and take a blender.
And the rest of the ingredients in this salsa are white onion......
fresh garlic......
serrano pepper - and if you don't want it spicy, you can eliminate the serrano pepper....
some cumin.....
lime juice......
And here is where I want to take some of my.....
.....liquid, maybe about two tablespoons.....
[Blender sound]
All right, now that that's been puréed, I'm going to add my.....
.....tomatillos.
And purée this until it's smooth. And then I'll add my cilantro.
[Blender sound]
Okay, coming back to finish the salsa verde with my fresh chopped cilantro.....
A pinch of salt....
[Blender sound]
And here we go, our finished salsa verde.
We'll cool this and serve it with our quesadilla.
Let's go ahead and finish our bean filling.
So, this has cooled slightly.
Remove the bay leaf....
I'm going to take four of these green onions and chop them roughly.
So, I kind of want the crunch of the green onions, so I add this *after* the fact,
*after* i've cooked the base.
Add my grated monterey jack cheese.....
And my red salsa - and i'm just picking a mild salsa from the grocery store.....
And this is a mixture that can be made ahead of time.....
And chilled.....so that you can pull it out and make simple quesadillas for your kids, anytime.
All right, so let's make a quesadilla using a whole wheat tortilla.
What I like to do is take the filling and put some on the front half of the quesadilla......
Fold it over..... And I have a pan on warm heat,
Just a touch of oil in the pan.
So, we're going to cook it about two minutes on each side, we'll flip it over,
and then we'll serve it with our garnishes of sour cream, avocado, and cilantro.
Okay, it's a little bit of a nice color, we'll cook it on this other side for about two minutes....
And then I'll be ready to plate it then.
And just for a nice presentation, I'm gonna plate it on a plate like this,
and Ihave my garnish. I have an avocado - where I've just kind of sliced it into dice. I'll scoop it out.
And some sour cream....
and my salsa verde.....
and that should be ready to go. Let's give this about another minute, and then we'll put this together.
Okay, so that was quite simple to make. You could do a whole quesadilla,
but I like to do it a half a quesadilla, like this, so it's easier to work with, easier to get out of the pan,
And we'll just cut this into quarters.
You want to let it cool just a little bit before you serve it.
But let's do a nice presentation here.
A little bit of salsa verde, and as I said, this is a very simple salsa.
If you left the serrano pepper out, it'd be very mild and I'm sure you can go that direction.
Some fresh avocado.....
And there we have it. Our pinto bean, monterrey jack, and red salsa quesadilla with salsa verde.