Armadillo!

A few years ago, my sister Aly and I started experimenting with what were basically mexican quesadillas. At the time we weren’t really sure on what the exact nature or even pronunciation of the authentic quesadilla was, so after a few fumbles around the word we settled on naming our version ‘armadillos’. It made sense at the time.

The armadillo is a simple beast (and, as it turns out, virtually intistinguishable from a real quesadilla). Much like its accidental namesake it has a lovely crispy outer shell, only it is made of fried tortilla and not horn-covered bone scutes. Probably more delicious that way, but to be honest I haven’t tried the latter. The filling generally should involve cheese (as you may know, ‘quesadilla‘ comes from ‘queso‘ which means ‘cheese’) but hey, the armadillo is a culinary maverick, and if you don’t want to put cheese in there, THAT IS YOUR RIGHT.

You can vary this recipe as much as you like. Put all the filling inside before you flip it, or keep some of it as a topping, as I’ve done here (entirely because I was worried about burning the tortilla before my cheese melted, as it started off frozen)  Add sour cream. Make the toppings here into a guacamole instead of a salad sort of concoction. What I am saying here is that there is no reason why you should exactly follow my recipe. Day-to-day cooking is a lot about improvisation, creativity, problem solving and making shit up as you go along. /Duh.

A Basic Recipe, or What I Did:
Ingredients:
-A flour tortilla (did you know that ‘tortilla‘ is actually Spanish for ‘omelette’? I learned that in SPAIN. Anyway, don’t use an omelette here. Use a tortilla.)
-Some cheese. About 1/2 Cup, grated.
-A tomato
-A spring onion
-Half an avocado
-Salsa

1. Dice your tomato and avocado and finely chop the spring onion.
2. Heat some olive oil in a pan.
3. Add the tortilla. Use a spatula to hold the tortilla flat as the bottom crisps, or it might puff up (which could be cool, if you want that. You can cut a slit in the resulting tortilla-balloon and use it as a pocket for the filling! Awesome! Pockets!)
4. When the bottom is golden, flip it over, and sprinkle on the cheese.
5. Watch cheese melt. Keep an eye on the bottom as you do this, because it could get black very quickly.
6. When cheese is almost fully melted, fold tortilla in half with spatula. If the bottom (which is now the top) is getting dangerously brown, lower the heat. Continue flipping your semi-circle armadillo until you’re pretty confident that the filling is cooked. A lot of this is instinct and common sense.
7. Remove armadillo from pan. Add tomatoes and onion to pan and toss for a few seconds. Season if you’re into that.
8. Arrange/dump tomato, onion and avocado onto armadillo. Top with salsa. Eat immediately, before the cheese cools too much.

Fried tortillas are a thing of beauty. After this one, I fried another and put a few balls of baby bocconcini in there. Simple and crispy and flavoursome and awesome. Sliced into triangles, it’s a really great appetiser, too.

And finally,

Resultant Kitchen Mess:

Minimal! Hooray!