Meatball Quesadillas

Fusion in cuisine is the blending of two or more cuisines and that is what we have going on here with my Meatball Quesadillas. It's a little bit Mexican with a whole lot of Italian mixed in. The inspiration for the recipe came from that fact that yesterday we made spaghetti sauce with Italian Style Meatballs for dinner.

The sauce was so delicious and I give credit to my husband for its creation. We can tomatoes at the end of every growing season and make up quart jars of fresh sauce which carries us through the long cold months of fall and winter. The meatball recipe is actually a Williams-Sonoma recipe that I simply adore. They are packed with flavor and remain very tender and soft which I why I wanted to come up with a left-over meatball make-over recipe.

Perhaps this isn't novel and it has been done before but as yet I have not seen it or don't remember seeing it. In any case these are great for a dinner, a lunch or even an afternoon snack when the kids arrive home from school. All kids love meatballs, cheese and sauce, right? And most of them love cheese quesadillas so this is a win-win for all.

• tortillas
• left-over meatballs
• left-over spaghetti sauce
• ricotta cheese
• mozzarella cheese
• dried basil
• dried oregano
• freshly ground black pepper
• olive oil

Here is how you put these together:

I did add just a slight drizzle of olive oil to my best non stick pan as it helped to brown the tortilla to crisp it up a bit. I also used a lid to help melt the cheese.

The Meatball Quesadilla doesn't take very long to put together and if you are cooking more than one you can use a long griddle pan like you would for doing a batch of pancakes.

They come out crispy on the exterior and the cheese gets gooey and melts beautifully. As I said this makes a super make over meal or a lunch over the weekend or an after school snack for the kids.

As for cost: well if you made my Italian Style Meatballs you already have the meatball and ricotta cheese covered. The spices are from your pantry. The only cost is some shredded mozzarella and the tortillas. Depending on how many you make and I am figuring for a family of four (one each) you are looking at about $3.00 total. That's a great cost for a make-over meal.