Talking about onions, quesadillas and the new IMK range

{This Product Talk is brought to you by Nuffnang and Spotlight IMK}

Do you have a cooking pet peeve?

I do.

Onions.

Don’t get me wrong. I love onions.

Eating onions that is. I don’t mind loading up recipes with extra onions. And on hot dogs, I always like to pile on heaps of grilled onions. The more the merrier.

But the thing I dread the most in the kitchen is…

Chopping onions.

I cry like a baby every time.

It’s a love-hate relationship.

I’ve tried almost every trick in the book.

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But let me share my fool-proof tear-free method for chopping onions…

A mini food chopper.

Just strip the skin off the onion, slice the onion in half, toss it into one of these little babies and voila!

Finely chopped onion in 30 seconds.

Here’s one of my favourite quick-fix healthy lunch recipes I cooked with the onions I just chopped in the mini food chopper…

Butter Bean and Onion Quesadilla

Ingredients
(Serves 2-3 adults or 4-5 children)
1 large onion, chopped
1-2 tbsp olive oil
400g can of butter beans*, drained
1/2 to 3/4 cup tasty cheese, grated
Salt and pepper to taste
4-5 pieces of Lebanese flat bread*

(*You can substitute the butter beans for kidney beans or chickpeas. If you can’t get hold of Lebanese flatbread, you can use pita pockets or even just regular sandwich bread)

Method
Remove skin from onion and pulse in mini food chopper until finely chopped (or you can just chop it up the regular way with a knife and chopping board and a box tissues).

Heat olive oil in pan. Toss in chopped onions and cook until softened and golden. Add in butter beans and stir until heated through.

With a stick blender, pulse the onion and bean mixture until lightly mashed up (or you can use a fork or potato masher and some muscle). A few small chunks of broken up beans doesn’t matter as it adds a bit of bite and texture.

Add grated cheese and mix through until melted. Season with salt and pepper to taste. I often omit the salt as I find the cheese provides sufficient flavour.

Spread cheesy bean and onion mixture on a piece of flatbread. Fold in half and cut into quarters. Heat another pan to medium high heat. Toast flatbread in hot pan until golden brown on both sides.

Serve immediately while they are warm and crispy.

Yum!

By the way, did you notice my new funky purple stick mixer set?

It’s from Spotlight’s new IMK Pro Colour range of kitchen appliances.

The range includes toasters, kettles, blenders and stick mixes in a range of bright and fun colours that are affordable, stylish and designed for use in the home every day.

Apart from the funky bright colour, the other thing I love about this stick mixer is the variable speed control dial. Most stick blenders I’ve come across usually have one or two standard speed settings. So the adjustable speed control is a pretty cool function. It also has a turbo button for doing quick pulses in intermittent high speed bursts.