Chicken and Corn Quesadillas

SAM_1218

There are probably only about half a million things to do with chicken and I’m going to add yet one more to the list. This recipe is another from the Tex-Mex collection that Josephine Belknap sent me a couple years ago. The original recipe called for crab, but Josephine crossed out the word crab and added chicken instead and that caught my eye. If you like crab, then, by all means, use this recipe with it, but the quesadillas with chicken are tasty and a bit more affordable.

The recipe calls for fresh corn cut from the cob, available now more readily as summer progresses, but I have used frozen kernels I cut from corn I raise and put away in zip-closed bags, and that works just fine. It is best to cook the chicken and shred it a little before stirring it into the cream cheese mixture. You do have to be the kind of person who has cumin, limes, and cilantro around and eight-inch flour tortillas.

We always have flour tortillas because, between home-cooked meals, Toby subsists on tortillas, which we call “roll-ups,” that he fills with anything from peanut butter or a scrambled egg, to cheese or some leftover or other. I own up that they are pretty handy items.

At this point, the cilantro volunteers in the garden. I pick and pick and some always goes to seed anyway, and obligingly self-sows. Starting in fairly early spring through frost, there is cilantro in one form or another in the garden. I love cumin, so always have that in the spice rack. The limes, on the other hand, are a sometimes thing. If I don’t have any, I leave it out.

If you have an avocado, you could adorn the top of the quesadilla with guacamole, or merely some sour cream and a bit of salsa.

We really enjoyed these and I hope you do, too.

Chicken and Corn Quesadillas
Serves: Four
 
Ingredients
  • ¼ cup (2 ounces) cream cheese
  • Juice of half a lime
  • ¼ teaspoon cumin, or to taste
  • 2-3 scallions chopped
  • 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
  • 1 cup cooked corn kernels
  • 1 cup cooked shredded chicken
  • ½ chopped red bell pepper, optional
  • 4 eight-inch flour tortillas
  • Shredded Monterey Jack cheese
  • Mix together the cream cheese, lime juice, cumin, scallions, and cilantro.
Instructions
  1. Mix together the cream cheese, lime juice, cumin, scallions, and cilantro.
  2. Add the corn and chicken and red pepper if using and blend.
  3. Warm the tortillas gently on a griddle and spread a quarter or less of the chicken and corn mixture on half of the tortilla.
  4. Sprinkle the cheese over the mixture and fold the tortilla together.
  5. Toast both sides on a griddle, or warm briefly in an oven.
  6. Serve warm.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.