Med school gourmet

As you well know, I’d always rather make up my own recipe than follow one. Here are two of my most popular culinary inventions of the last month.

Crunchy Quesadillas

It’s often been pointed out that Taco Bell has 5 ingredients that it uses for everything on its menu. This is only a very slight exaggeration. So when asked to make a Mexican dish, I thought I’d just take Taco Bell’s approach and invent something Mexicanish. I broiled two tortillas, one covered in cheese and the other in refried beans. Any beans will do, though mine had salsa mixed in, which added a bit to the taste. The only relatively novel thing in this dish was that after the tortillas were crisp/brown/melted I added a meticulous layer of tortilla chips onto the refried beans. I added some more cheese, slapped the two layers together and cooked it briefly so the layers melted together.

I had intended to have several layers (perhaps 3 tortillas) including a layer of grilled chicken. But I decided that I liked them relatively thin so the chicken out of the quesadillas themselves. It was already grilled though, so after cutting each tortilla into 8 slices and artfully arranging them in a dish I garnished them with chunked chicken with melted cheese to hold it in place.

So they were gooey and tasty, which is my personal definition of a quesadilla, plus a bit spicy and crunchy. I’ve actually made them a couple times since because they store relatively well (remaining crunchy.)

Chris Mix

A friend had told me he liked chocolate covered peanuts mixed with sour watermelon candies. I told him he was on crack. But since we had a test this week and I needed some study food, I decided to concoct my own mix.

Take 2 part Sour Patch Kids. Not everyone likes the Kids, but I do so tough nuts to everyone else. Add 2 parts chocolate covered peanuts. My roommate tried to add chocolate covered raisins, but I nixed that. Raisins are grapes soaked in evil. My only addition to the concept, but I feel a vital one, was adding 3 parts animal crackers. This supplied the vital base for the recipe. The chocolate was sweet, the Kids sour AND sweet, so it was really necessary to add something plane.

So basically it’s an alternative trail mix, removing anything healthy. It was also extremely popular. My batch for test week ended up being completely devoured between our viewing of the Flight of the Conchords and our trip to the Demolition Derby.