since our latino party in january i’ve become a bit obsessed with quesadillas. initially we had them to use up a pumpkin and cheese mix which was leftover from a batch of empanadas. having found out how easy they are to make (i’ve always defaulted to the roll-your-own approach with soft tortillas) i pulled out an allegra mcevedy recipe i bookmarked last year for spicy black bean quesadillas.

as well as being easy to assemble these have the advantage of only taking 5 minutes to pull together the filling, which mostly uses store cupboard ingredients. since then i’ve made a batch of spicy bean quesadillas each week, using different beans depending on what i have in.

for me, what really makes this dish is the pile of avocado salad which is place on top of the quesadillas when serving. this adds a dose of healthiness and freshness which is perfect for ushering in the spring weather which is finally arriving.

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this dish was the result of my need to use up a tub of ricotta before it passed its sell-by date. i had bought it to stuff courgette flowers with but didn’t manage to cook with the flowers before they wilted beyond use, despite my best efforts – they really do need to be used on the day you pick/get them.

so, i turned to dennis cotter and decided to adapt his semolina gnocchi recipe, using ricotta in place of the goats cheese, adding a handful of herbs from garden – sage, oregano and thyme – and topping the gnocchi with a lightly cooked mix of green beans (again from the garden), peas and broad beans. i finished it with a lime cream, having run out of lemons.

the result was delicious – very light, summery and perfect if you want something a bit special, either as a treat or if you are cooking for friends. the gnocchi adapted well to having the ricotta added and was very forgiving of my use of twice as much cheese as the original recipe called for. i also baked it for much longer than the original recipe suggests – 10-15 minutes each side, having turned them over once, rather than the suggested 10 minutes in total. this gave me golden slight crunchy gnocchi which went really well with the lightly cooked vegetables.

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