$317 vs $13 Quesadilla: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients | Epicurious

I'm sorry, chef. I'm so, oh, I'm so sorry. Hi, I'm Saul. I'm a professional chef, and these are my $317 quesadilla ingredients. Hi, I'm John. I'm a home cook, and these are my $13 quesadilla ingredients. So long. Okay, it's fine. Can do this. Oh my God. This is heirloom? I was planning to make, with la coche, a pasote and present quesadillas with salsa borracha and chapulines. The only word that I really picked up there is and and with. Very traditional Mexican ingredients for a very fancy quesadilla. I was going to make tortillas from scratch infused with chile guajillos. These are dried chilies, so kind of like maybe anchos. I also want to use, with la coche, it's a delicacy in Mexico. I don't think I've ever even seen this before. I don't know what this is. It's a type of corn fungus. It's a very hard thing to grow. It's kind of like a truffles. It's a mushroom. Okay, it's a mushroom. Great. I was going to make my own crema from scratch. Some nice and spicy salsa borracha. Oh, tequila. Yeah, yep. And top it up with some crunchy chapulines. Garlic grasshoppers. Grasshoppers. We're going to be making grasshopper quesadillas today. They're salty, they're crispy, spicy, and they're full of protein. With John's recipe, I have ingredients that you might find on your pantry or local grocery store. They might be on the simpler side, but I'm a professional and I will make these simple ingredients better. If I had to guess, these will all cost $13.65. I'm going to play the lotto today. So if I had to guess, all of these ingredients would cost about $210. Whoa! $317? I mean, he didn't skimp out on me. So Chef Saul left me his recipe book, which has a very pared down recipe of what I'm going to be doing today. Oh, a little cheese. That's the support right there. That's what I needed. Enjoy the time. Don't worry. You got this. I know you can do this. So we're working on the part of the recipe with the guajillo tortillas. I'm assuming these are the guajillo chilies. I called these ancho earlier. My bad. You only need the skin of the guajillos. We remove the stems. We remove the seeds. John, whatever you do, do not touch your eyes. I know why I'm wearing gloves. I didn't have the urge to touch my eyes before, but now, now. And you boil them until they're nice and soft, like my heart. Okay. So these are going to soak until they're all soft, and then I'm going to transfer them into this bowl. John, give me these flour tortillas, but I'm going to make something new. I'm going to put some of these tortillas on this tray. I'm going to bake it in the oven at 275 until they're nice and crispy. And then I'm going to blend it to make it into a flour. These are done boiling. And then you puree them. So you make a guajillo puree. My tortillas, they look nice and crispy. Can you hear that? Huh? That's the sound of flavor. I'm going to let this cool. I'm going to put all the liquid from here. It's a lot of flavor in here. I'm going to make this nice and smooth and fluffy. And I'm going to add some beans. And I'm going to add a little bit of texture and more flavor. And now we're making flour. So we're adding the liquid. So we're not going to stop until we see a dough. And this is where the magic happens. One, two, three, voila, magic. Never used one of these before. I'm going to have to put the white corn masa harina in here. That looks serviceable. Okay, let's throw that in there. Let's rig this up, lock this into place. Should probably add some salt. And then add water as you go. Oh, it's looking good. It's looking like a dough, a proper dough. As soon as you don't see any dough into your hands, that means it's ready. And no residue. There we go. Now let's wrap it in some plastic. This black bean tortilla dough has been sitting for over an hour. Now I'm going to make this into tortillas. Black bean tortilla. It's time for me to make my tortillas. To prevent the dough to stick into the tortilla press, you're going to need two pieces of plastic. One on the bottom, one on top. You're going to put the dough in between and press it. Ooh, that's a mighty fine looking tortilla. Once you have the plastic where the tortilla is, kind of want to put it in one hand. And then in your other hand, you're going to lay the tortilla and you're going to remove the plastic. And then slowly and carefully, you're going to lay it on the grill. There it is. Okay. I'm going to do a little bit of oil here. It's looking good. I'm going to flip this guy. I hear bubbling. Oh, we're going to try this again. The impossible is always possible. Don't forget that. And these are my black bean tortillas. Usually I feel like tortillas are a little thinner. Oh God. Oh, it's breaking. I got to save this. I'm going to try a thinner tortilla. No! Chef! Aha! Yes. Oh my God. Let's take it into the basket. Now I'm going to be chopping these red onions, jalapeño. I'm going to char. So we'll have a jalapeño onion crema. The reason why I leave the insides of the jalapeño because I want the sauce to be more spicy. Now I'm going to put this into a bowl, put it to chill. All right. It's crema time, everybody. First thing I'm going to do is heat up the milk. There we go. Empty milk carton. So if I mess this up, I can't try again. Fantastic. We want to heat up the milk at 170 and we want to make sure that the milk doesn't boil. Now that these are cool, I'm going to put it in the blender and fold it into the crema. I'm going to add a little bit of sour cream to help puree the vegetables. I wish I could have made my sour cream, but no. Chef Saul said I should be very careful with the temperature and we're right now above 170. So I'm going to turn this guy off. This is the white distilled vinegar. Oh, that's, ooh. Now our apple cider vinegar. It looks like it's getting a bit clumpy. All right. I'm going to stir this for a couple of minutes and then I'm going to leave it for about an hour and see how it looks after that. Our crema looks pretty good. Now let's find out if it's good. Really good. And this is my char jalapeno and onion crema. So this has been sitting for an hour. I'm noticing a few changes in here. It's looking a little separated. We have our clumpy milk stuff and then we have our runny vinegar stuff. So after that, we're going to use a colander to remove all the liquid and keep the curds. It looks more like cheese now. We're going to add it to the blender. Heavy cream, lime. All right, we're getting somewhere. Some friction. I don't know how much salt we got to add, but I like me things salty. I'm fairly confident with how that turned out. Now that is a sturdy amount of crema. So my oven is set at 250. Now I'm going to dry these vegetables. I'm going to cut these tomatoes and then remove the insides of the tomato. This will help the tomatoes get dried faster. I can't call them sundried tomatoes because I'm not using the sun. I'm going to call these tomatoes, salt-dried tomatoes. So I'm going to be saving some of these liquids that are inside of the tomatoes to add it to my salsa. Because where I'm from, we don't waste anything. Cutting vegetables is not my strong suit, but I'm going to do my best to get them as nicely cut and waste as little as possible. John, you're going to make your salsa from scratch. One of my favorite salsas, salsa borracha, which means drunken sauce. I got these chilies here. I got to de-stem them, and then I got to de-seed them. I'm going to quarter the tomatoes. I'm going to half the onion and I'm going to de-stem, de-seed, and half these jalapenos. A half a pino? Is that a good joke? I'm just going to get right in there and just... Oh, yeah. Oh, that looks terrible. Oh, nothing pretty about that. Every time you cut a jalapeno, I'm sure you didn't even look at it. Enjoy the beauty of nature. So we have our beautiful, fresh tomatoes, our lovely jalapenos. Probably needed to do the cilantro, too. Maybe I'll just cut off the stems. I'll remove any leafage from the bottom. So I'm going to bake these at 250 for two to eight hours. So I'll see you tomorrow. All my veggies are chopped now. Let's give them a char so that my salsa is nice and smoky. Starting to smell a bit toasty. I think that should do it. My chilies are soaking. Meanwhile, let's char the tomatoes. The next step for my salsa, I'm going to cut this onion, put it in the blender. I'm going to add some lime juice, salt, and the insides of the tomatoes because we are not wasting. And now we're going to make this into smoothie. I'm going to do shots out of this. The moment of truth. Oh, that's a nice charring. This might be a good time to start taking things off. Let's move them over here. Get them all out of there. We got to get to charring the rest of our veggies. And then last thing, garlic. I'm going to add some oil to the pan. Oh, that's not the oil. Oh, and the squeezy bottle. Nice, thank you. It's getting real smoky in here. You can see, I feel like I'm in a 1990s music video. These all look pretty charred up. Now I'm going to move these to a bowl and I'm going to keep working on my salsa. They look good. They look like a sundried tomato. Look at this. But they're not sundried tomatoes. That's all dried tomatoes. Now I'm going to chop this up. I'm going to add my base to these dry vegetables to keep it a little bit moist. Oil. I want the vegetables to soak as much liquid as they can so they don't be too dry. All right, I'm going to take all my charred veggies, put them in the food processor, and then put them back in the pan. What makes the salsa borracha? What makes you borracho? What makes you drunk? Tequila. I do have two liquids here. I have the tequila and orange juice. The tequila will prevent it from spoiling so soon. Salt and then some pepper. Here we go. I'm going low-ish heat. It's not even done yet, but it is probably the best salsa that I've ever made. And that's all thanks to you, Chef Saul. This is all thickened up. I'm super happy about it. It looks delicious. This is my salsa borracha, my drunk salsa. Instead of pico de gallo, I'm going to be doing a quick pickled red onion. So I'm going to do a julienne cut. And for this step, you have to close your eyes. And now I'm going to use some limes. And I'm going to do this because this is going to help remove the juice easier. The lime job right now is to pickle the onions, right? Because it's full of acidics. Acidics cures things. And now jalapenos. Salt, pepper. Now, normally you use vinegar, you boil. This is a very simple way to eat onions. We're going to let this sit and really pickle. And we're going to move to the next thing. I'm going to chop up the mushrooms for the filling. I'm going to loosely chop because I don't know how to do anything else. Mushrooms are chopped. So I'm going to put them in this bowl and set them off to the side. And then I'll move on to my herbs. Epazote. Never heard of this herb before. It's kind of some like spice fragrance to it. I call it the Mexican cousin of the basil. These are my epazote leaves that we took off. Now to the purslane. Never worked with purslane before. Never heard of it. Now that all this is ready, I can start my filling. It's time to grind our chicken. The grinder has to be ice cold. So this just came out of the freezer. And the chicken too. So that will help have a smoother grinder and shape too. I'm going to take this chicken and turn it into a patty. And that's what I will use for my smashed chicken quesadilla. And that's how we ground chicken. All right, it's time to put my filling together. Now this part is where I'm comfortable. Putting a bunch of stuff in a pan and cooking it. When making the filling of the quesadilla, it's the Mexican ratatouille. So we're going to start with a little bit of garlic, onion. So let's get to stirring. I hear that sizzle. Now you're going to add the oyster mushrooms. Saute for a little bit. Now you're going to add the huitlacoche. Huitlacoche tastes sour. And that's why you add other ingredients to balance the flavor. And those ingredients you find in any market in Mexico. You will have the best Mexican ratatouille of your life. This is going to cook down. It's going to take a bit. So let's start with the cheeses. I love Oaxaca cheese so much. It just comes in like this spiral of art. All you got to do with Oaxaca cheese, in my knowledge, is just rip it apart. It's very string cheesy. It's like a mozzarella equivalent. So that's our Oaxaca cheese. And now we're going to get to crumbling my queso fresco. There's no nice way to do this. This cheese is called quesadilla. Incredible. So I'm going to shred this guy. Oh God. Slippery. My cheeses have been completed. Back to my mushrooms. You got some liquid coming off the mushrooms, which looks really nice. We're going to want that to go away though. The flavor wants to stay, but the liquid wants to go. With these tortillas, I'm going to make a chicharron to garnish my quesadilla. We're just going to fry them. Chicharron is the skin of the pork that has been dehydrated and then it's fried, so it's nice and crispy. But we don't have any pork. So basically you're going to fry it both sides. We're going to do this a bunch of times so this is nice and crispy. Look, the tortilla is telling me, take him out of the oil. I'm already crispy. No, you're not, baby. I want it to be crispier. I'm going to put it right here. I'm going to open this taco seasoning mix original from El Paso. FYI, I never, ever use this, so I have to try this. There's nothing wrong with this. If you like this, good for you. If you don't like this, good for you. We're going to sprinkle just a little bit here. And there you have it, my tortilla chicharron. Parsley, throw those in here. And now you're going to add some epazote. It's a little bit of bitter, but it's delicious. And lastly, my jalapenos. Some good char on the bottom of the pan. So this filling seems pretty good to go. I'm going to move to my next thing. Okay, so I have my chicken. This has cumin, has salt, so it's not that bad, right? Now I'm going to add tomatoes and jalapenos. Black pepper and queso, which is a Mexican blend. Monterey Jack, cheddar cheese. Why we call this Mexican? Because a Mexican is using it. So now I'm going to make some four ounces balls. Is this four ounces? Oh my gosh, 3.9. Now my chicken is ready to be cooked. Ooh, yeah, that's hot. So I'm going to put on cheese. I'm going to put it on both sides. Fill up in one side of the tortilla only. Only one side because you're going to fold the tortilla, right? I have a tendency to load up things way too much. Now we're going to add the filling. I got to work quick. Grasshoppers, another gift of earth. It's salty, they're lemony. Wow, they look really crunchy. All right, now we fold. Now we let the cheese do its thing. Now it's time to put everything together and I'm going to have to move quickly. All right, so what I'm going to do, I'm going to put the chicken here. I'm going to smash it. Once I have a nice sear, I'm going to flip it. I'm going to put a little bit of cheese. I'm going to put the tortilla on top. Beautiful. I'm going to put more cheese now. And then I'm going to do a little bit of salsa. And after the salsa, I'm going to add a little bit of my chicharron. I want some crunchiness on my quesadilla. Chef, that's not a chicharron. I know it's not a chicharron. It has the texture of a chicharron. Okay, I'm going to give it a gentle flip. Be cautious, be cautious. Aha, that's looking pretty solid. I think I'm going to throw it on a plate. And this is where I fold it. It's time for you to go to bed. Cover with your blanket and sweet dreams. Have a good night. So we just make the impossible possible. And these are my quesadillas and I'm ready to play. Before I plate the quesadilla, there is one thing that I need to do. I got to try a grasshopper. It's actually pretty good. Kind of like a crunchy olive. All right, let's do like a diagonal. That seems very chic. This is actually the first time I'm using this cheese today. It's Cotija cheese. A little crumbly on the outside. It's imperfect. That's a style. And then we'll put on some parslain. Now grasshoppers. Oh, I almost forgot. My old friend cilantro's here. And lastly, I'm going to put my crema and my salsa on the plate. And that's my take on Chef Saul's quesadilla. I'm going to put the quesadilla in the middle. I'm going to do the crema. And then I'm going to do some of the juice from here all over the plate. Why everything I do is so pretty? If you don't believe me, look at my kit. A nice piece of chicharron. We're going to garnish it with a little bit of my pico, onions, and one jalapeno because everything tastes good with heat. And this is my cheesy smashed chicken quesadilla with black bean tortilla and sun-dried tomato salsa. Chef Saul, I had a great day. You look like you had a great day. Oh, you did that? It looked like I did this. Good job, man. You good job. Are you kidding me? Look at you. How did you fare with my very skimpy ingredients? It was very, I think it was one of the hardest dish to do. I was freaking out. I was worried about the tortilla. So the flour tortilla became flour again. And then I add some beans and make a black bean tortilla. You reverse engineered the tortilla to go back to its chemical compound of flour. Yeah, that sounds like it. You are a scientist. Sounds like a dita. The moment of truth. This actually came out wonderful. Honestly, I thought it was going to be doughy, but it's not, so it's good. To me, this is a quesadilla that I grew up eating. And what you did, the presentation, so far is a 10. Cheers. Give it to me straight, chef. I wish you didn't eat the half so I can eat it all for me. Okay, cheers. Cheers. Salud.