Kate's Cure for the Common Cuisine: Grilled Pineapple and Ginger Soy Chicken Quesadillas

I found and adapted this recipe from my culinary hero, the Pioneer Woman. If you are not familiar with her, I highly suggest you get acquainted. This dinner was so simple and delicious on a summer evening for Mr. Max and me.

Her recipe called for BBQ but I didn't have any BBQ sauce, so I decided to go with the Asian-tropical influence that I had in my fridge instead.

Grocery List:
Package of at least 8 tortillas
No-Stick Spray
2 Cups of Pineapple (whole or pre-cut)
1 package of chicken breast tenders (easier to cut up)
3 Cups of Monterrey Jack Cheese
Cilantro
Honey Ginger Soy Sauce (or teryaki marinade, or BBQ sauce, or whatever you feel like using)

Additional needs:
Large Skillet
Griddle (if you have one)
Chopping Knife
Cutting board
Skewers

First take your griddle or skillet and spray with no-stick spray. Set the heat to low to warm it up.

Next, take your chicken and chop until you have small bite size bits - as mentioned before, I prefer to get the tenders because then some of the work is already done for me. I had a marinade that was from the meat counter at Whole Foods, a honey ginger soy, which I doused the chicken in and let it marinate for a couple hours. I would recommend at least 20 minutes.

Marinading the chicken tenders

While your chicken is marinading, take your pineapple and cut it into smaller bite size pieces, the 1 inch chunks it was already pre-cut into are just a little too big for this. I asked the meat man at the counter if there were any wooden skewers I could buy and he kindly gave me a packet of them for free. I would suggest you do the same, you remember to smile and say please, ladies! Maybe bat those big, beautiful eyes... ok maybe too far, or is it? Arrange your pineapple along the skewers, and set on the griddle/skillet, turning the heat up to medium-high, flipping to each side of your pineapple cube every 3 minutes.

Beginning to cook the pineapple skewers

While your pineapple "grills", take your chicken and cook it through in another skillet. While both are cooking, take a knife to your cilantro and finely chop up about a handful.

Cooking the chicken

Grilled pineapple

Once the chicken and pineapple are done, take a tortilla and set on your heating surface (griddle or skillet). Sprinkle your Monterrey Jack cheese over the tortilla, let melt, then arrange the chicken, pineapple and cilantro on top. Next add a little more of the Honey Ginger Soy sauce. Let it cook until cheese has almost completely melted, then top with more cheese (because everything tastes better with cheese....)and second tortilla. Flip the quesadilla to allow the new tortilla to brown and the inside to cook a little longer.