Quesadilla (pronounced ke-sah-dee-uh)

Exactly what constitutes a quesadilla varies from region to region and between the U.S. and Mexico, and is not universally agreed upon by Chefs, but there are certain similarities between the different versions that people generally agree upon...(from Wikipedia)

D was cooking dinner the other night and asked me to bring some cream on the way home. When I got there, she had already fried off some saffron milk caps (Lactarius deliciosus) that we had picked the previous weekend and wanted the cream to make sauce with them. She could have easily stopped right there and simply served the mushrooms with some plain boiled potatoes, or even better, some creamy polenta, but I noticed that she had a large bowl full of finely grated potatoes and a frying pan heating on the stove, placki (Polish potato cakes) were on the way.

This is one of D's favourite dishes and is very traditionally Polish. We normally all stand around the kitchen as they're being cooked and eat them hot from the frying pan. I like mine with a hit from the pepper grinder, D loves hers with a dollop of sour cream and M eats hers just plain. But today was different. Instead of putting in spoonfuls of mixture to make three placki at a time, D simply filled the entire base of the frying pan with mixture to make one large placki. When that was cooked she immediately made another, then laid the first placki on a plate, topped it with the creamy wild mushroom mixture and topped that with the second placki.

It looked for all the world exactly like a quesadilla.

I said to D we were eating Mexican tonight and a puzzled look broke out across her face, so I pointed out the similarity to her and she laughed and told me that the Polish actually do a dish called Hungarian quesadilla, which consists of two large placki with goulash between them.

I bet the Mexicans never saw that coming.

Labels: quesadilla