Ingredient Improvisation Gone Totally Wrong

I love sharing recipes, restaurant reviews and ideas about food with you. When I make a dish and it comes out great, I'm hopeful that a few of you will try it and enjoy it as much as I did. When I try a new restaurant and write about the excellent food, I hope that perhaps a few of my readers might venture out to give that restaurant a go too. So with most of my posts I'm excited about sharing a delicious experience with you.

Not this time. Whatever you do, do not recreate this dish at home. This meal was very, very bad. Here's what happened:

We didn't have big plans for Super Bowl Sunday. After the Lima Bean was tucked in bed, Win sat down with a big bowl of popcorn and was planning on making that his game-watching dinner. (We had eaten kind of a large lunch that day) While I didn't need anything huge, I did feel like more of a "real" dinner, so I headed to the fridge to see what I might find.

I love it when I improvise and come up with something really delicious, just by throwing some different ingredients together. This is not an innate skill for me; I've traditionally been a recipe follower and I trust the expert chefs to decide what ingredients taste best with what others. Over time and with experience, however, I've gotten better and bolder with kitchen improvisation.

So emboldened by some recent successes, I peered into the fridge and decided to make a quesadilla from:

-2 flour tortillas
-shredded Asiago cheese
-1 stick of string cheese that was mozzarella and cheddar swirled together
-1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
-parsley

OK, looking back on this ingredients list now, it's obvious that this is going to be nasty. But at the time, I was full of hope and optimism and thought that maybe I was about to create something magical while also using up odds and ends from my refrigerator.

The quesadilla was disgusting. Asiago cheese really doesn't work in a quesadilla and the fake, rubbery string cheese did nothing to help the situation. You may remember that I used chipotle peppers in adobo sauce for my Queso Fundido recipe a couple weeks back. The peppers were outstanding in that dish, so I figured they'd be great with the quesadilla. Earth to Linda...think about the pepper to cheese ratio when using exceptionally hot peppers! The queso fundido mixed 2 chipotle peppers with 8 ounces of cheese and loads of other ingredients to cool the heat a bit. I mixed one chipotle pepper with barely an ounce of cheese. Mouth on fire!

So we have mismatched, rubbery cheese and flaming hot peppers. For the final touch I threw in some parsley because hey, it adds some nice touches of color throughout and maybe it would add a little freshness. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The parsley just sat there mocking me "I really should be cilantro, but no, I'm parsley."

I'm not one to waste food but this quesadilla had to be dealt with forcefully. Thus, after a few horrible bites, it was sent to its final resting place.



Remember, you have a warning. This dish was very, very bad so never try this at home.

Next time on At Our Table: A unique twist on an old favorite (and I promise it'll be good this time!)