Summer brings one of our favorite fruit. Mango’s! We love them both raw and ripe. It is rare to find raw mangos in USA, but they can be found more often these days.
I believe india and mexico both share a similar kind of love for raw mango’s. When we were in school fruit carts would tempt us with raw mango’s cut up and sprinkled with red chili powder and salt. Here is a picture of cut raw mango’s searved on a leaf and ready to be sold that we took on a summer trip to pune a few years back.
We later saw similar scenes of vendors in mexicos selling an ingenious version of mango’s on a stick. Its the savory lovers answer to caramel apples!
Given that, we stole an opportunity to jazz up our weeknight meal by icorporating this raw mango in a quesedilla. We chose a flour tortilla because thats what we had on hand. We softened it up just slightly in the microwave and it then went on a lightly oiled skillet on low heat. We like to cook our quesedilla slowly.
We then added chopped raw mango’s dice, green pepper dice, some red onion dice, finely chopped green chilies and cilantro. We seasoned with salt and some ground turmeric, fennel, fenugreek, cumin and coriander. You can substitute with a mild curry powder, a couple of pinches being sufficient. We then topped it with some wisconsin made queso (cheese) perfect for quesedillas. We would love to make these with the oxaca cheese someday soon.
Then we topped the skillet with a cover and let the quesedilla cook slowly as it melted the cheese. We then gently folded it in half and checked for a little bit of toastiness on both folded side.
It then went off the pan onto the cutting board and was cut into four uneven pieces.
We served these with some salsa rioja and mexican cream / sour cream.
The melted cheese mixing with the smoky warming masala flavors create some magic and the sour bites of mango add freshness. Every once in a while you bite in a green chili and it releases the heat but dipping it in the cold sour cream is deeply satisfying. This makes for a very playful quesedilla night indeed!
