Iron Chef quesadillas

We recently introduced the boys to Iron Chef.  It speaks to their natural love of making everything a competition and they've really enjoyed cheering on the iron chefs as they take on the challengers.

We've been eating lots of cheese lately and I've been trying to decide the best ways to cut back to more reasonable levels.  I discovered that nutritional yeast in eggs is delicious and actually makes them taste rather cheesy so that's been a great addition to quiches and frittatas.  But one of our favorite lunches is quesadillas so today I googled for vegan quesadillas and found an amazing number of options that didn't just call for soy cheese.  Each of the older boys picked a recipe and we decided to battle it out tonight to decide whose cuisine reigns supreme.  Mr. 9 hummed the theme song while he was cooking and was actually quite into it.  He wanted us to move faster and kept reminding me that the clock was ticking.  Mr. 7 was more distractible but still interested.  And Mr. 3 just likes to be in the middle of everything.

Mr. 9's potato-based quesadillas (excuse my rather sad food pictures):

10 cloves garlic

1 pound organic potatoes, cut in 1/2 to 1-inch chunks

1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

Remove outer papery skins from garlic cloves but don't peel. Pan roast the cloves in a covered skillet over medium heat. Shake the skillet frequently to mix the cloves up. Roast until soft. Mine took about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. Peel and mince.

Cover the potato chunks with cold water. Add salt. Boil until tender. Mine took about 25 minutes. Reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid. Drain the potatoes.

Place potatoes, oil, and garlic in a bowl. Mash with a potato masher, adding reserved cooking liquid until you get your desired texture. 

I added lime juice, chili powder, and black beans to this and spread it on tortillas.

Mr. 7's nutritional yeast-based recipe (even worse photo):

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lowfat soymilk
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon mustard
1/4 teaspoon turmeric

Put all sauce ingredients into a medium non-stick saucepan, add the salsa, and stir as you bring to a boil. Reduce heat and continue to cook, stirring, for at least 2 minutes after boiling. Sauce should be thick and smooth. 

Our decision: We really liked Mr. 7's quesadillas but the sauce was too thin and the boys thought I added a bit too much salsa into the sauce.  Mr. 1 ate tons of the Mr. 9's quesadillas (they were not that spicy and held together really well).  Both were good enough that we'll try them again!