October 10, 2012 Dinner - Lamb Quesadilla

October 10, 2012 Dinner - Lamb Quesadilla

I meditated at 7:00 and then stopped at Lowe’s for a gallon of 2% milk and to peruse it new liquor and wine section, so did not get home until almost 8:30 p.m.

Suzette said it was too late to eat, which I took to mean that it was too late to cook, so I made a few suggestions.  Finally when I suggested making a chicken quesadilla, her eyes lit up and she said, “Let’s make a lamb and feta quesadilla.”  Since Suzette usually makes the quesadilla, I got out the lamb, flour tortillas and container of French Presidente crumbled feta and started slicing the lamb while she stated toasting the flour tortillas in a pan.  Suzette checked the Greek yogurt but it had gone bad and was thrown.

What she did next surprised me.   Suzette took the homemade pesto from the fridge and put a healthy Tbsp. of it into the large cast iron skillet that had been used to sauté the cipollini onions the night before, and after softening the pesto into a sauce, lightly sautéed the lamb slices in the pesto and onion sauce until their lamb color turned from bright red (we had undercooked the lamb) into a light greyish brown and it had absorbed a lot of the pesto sauce.  Suzette then sliced a large yellow tomato that she had brought home from her organic garden at the Center for Ageless Living.  After she toasted one side of each of two tortillas and turned them she piled some feta cheese onto of inside of one of the toasted tortillas and then placed slices of tomato and after a few minutes of cooking the lamb placed the pesto sauce drenched lamb slices on the feta and tomato.  When the second side of the quesadilla was toasted e we then sliced the quesadilla in half and plated the dish. 

We each drank a glass of PPI red wine.  The combination of lamb and pesto and cipollini onion flavor was fabulous.  The under cooked lamb had yielded some of its two day marinade of wine, olive oil, garlic and rosemary into the pesto/onion sauce to create a rich savory creamy sauce with the melted feta cheese and cooked tomato.   I thought the lamb, when combined with these flavors, tasted better that last night’s grilled lamb dinner with crab apple mint sauce.

I am sorry we did not have a Greek yogurt sauce with fresh mint but for a quick dinner one could not complain.  The creamy feta melted into a pesto/onion sauce actually tasted better than andd took the place of the yogurt sauce in my opinion.

We often leave our skillets that we have used to cook dishes in on the stove, such as the cipollini onion skillet and use the PPI cooking mediums/sauces in them for subsequent dishes.   For example, we left the pesto/onion sauce in the skillet from tonight’s meal.  Perhaps it will be a lovely combination in which to cook scrambled eggs or a smoked pork chop, etc.

 This is just one example of a successful PPI utilization of left over cooking mediums.

Bon Appètit