Smoky Pepper and White Bean Quesadillas
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- Serves: 2 (makes 1 deeply filled quesadilla)
- Preparation: 4
- Cooking: 6
- Ready: 10
With roasted red peppers, smoky paprika and white beans, these quesadillas from Anna Jones, have a more Spanish flavour than Mexican.
Ingredients
- 2 spring onions
- olive oil
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- 100 g cooked white beans
- 100 g jarred, roasted red peppers
- 1 unwaxed lemon
- ½ bunch of fresh parsley
- 2 wholemeal or seeded tortillas or wraps
- a handful of cherry tomatoes
Method
Get all your ingredients together.
Finely slice the spring onions. Put a frying pan on a medium heat, add a little olive oil, the spring onions and smoked paprika, and cook for a couple of minutes, until starting to brown.
Meanwhile, put the white beans into a mixing bowl and mash them with a fork, then roughly chop your red peppers and add half of them to the beans. Grate over the zest of the lemon, then roughly chop the parsley and add half to the bowl. Once the spring onions are browned, add these too.
Lay a tortilla or wrap on your work surface. Spoon the red pepper mixture all over it, spread it evenly, then top with the other tortilla. Heat a frying pan and toast the quesadilla for a couple of minutes on each side – I do this dry, but you can add a splash of oil if you like your quesadillas crispy. If you find it hard to flip, a plate on top might help.
While the quesadilla is toasting, roughly chop the tomatoes, mix with the remaining peppers and parsley and squeeze in the juice of half the lemon.
Once toasted on both sides, remove the quesadilla from the pan and cut into six pieces. Serve in the middle of the table, with the salsa for spooning over.
Additonal notes
This recipe is taken from Anna Jones’s new book, A Modern Way to Cook.
Reproduced with the kind permission of Anna Jones and 4th Estate.
“Quesadillas, like a lot of Mexican food, get a bad write-up as being cheese-laden and lazy, but they are a truly quick meal, and by filling them with not just cheese they become more nourishing and much more delicious.
Here I have stepped away from the straight-up Mexican quesadillas and introduced some Spanish flavours. Roasted red peppers, smoky paprika and white beans – it makes me think of summer trips to Barcelona, and that can never be a bad thing.
I mostly make these at lunchtime, but they are filling enough for a dinner – you might want some sherry-vinegar-dressed green salad on the side.
If you are making these for a party, which I often do, the filling can be made in bigger batches really easily. The quesadillas can be stacked in the fridge, filled, and ready for frying.”
