Sweet Potato Black Bean Quesadillas w/ Creamy Black Bean Dip

Tonight I made sweet potato black bean quesadillas for a potluck dish.  Here's the break down:

I took half of a very large sweet potato,  cut it into four strips (quartered lengthwise), and then cut those into about 1/4 - 1/3  inch thick slices, and fried them in olive oil.  I wanted these to be thin enough to put happily onto the quesadilla, but not chip thin.  

Then I cut up a couple of small onions into small strips, and fried them up in the left over olive oil, with some Sriracha.  I had those in the skillet for a while, till they were caramelized; plenty browned and a little crispy.  

So then I laid out nine tortillas, and put just a small sprinkle of shredded Mozzarella on each (sorry vegans, you can also use your favorite "cheeze").  Then a layer of the sweet potato, and I sprinkled on some cooked black beans.  Next I added an even smaller amount of cheddar cheese, and then a small pile of caramelized onions.  

Here's a picture of them without the tops on.  To me it looked good like that, just could have heated it up in the broiler, but i went for the classic quesadilla anyhow.  

Top it off with another sprinkling of cheese, and another tortilla.  And through it in a dry skillet on med heat,  maybe a minute on each side, making sure the middle is hot enough.  Then I cut each quesadilla into six pieces and plated.  If you want to make them ahead of time,  cook them the same, but don't cut them up.  Then you can heat them up on a cookie sheet in the oven, that'll get the tortillas nice and crispy again.  

Creamy Vegan Black Bean Dip:

So last summer, I came across several blocks of silken tofu, but, well, I don't like silken tofu.  I love good old fashion, extra firm, Chinese style tofu,  but this silken stuff just doesn't do it for me.  So I froze the tofu, hoping I'd find something to use them for later.  Well I finally got around to experimenting.  I looked up how to make "sour cream" from tofu,  and found a simple recipe at vegetarian.about.com.  It looked alright, so i went for it.  Basically it was just silken tofu, with a bit of lemon juice, oil, and vinegar.  It didn't taste like sour cream,  but that's ok, i didn't need it to taste exactly like sour cream, it was creamy and salty and a little sour, it almost had a flavor like a creamy goat cheese, but maybe we were being fooled by the texture (it didn't get as smooth as fresh tofu would have).  

So I had that in my food processor already, and I added some cooked black beans, and spices, then blended it up for a wonderfully creamy black bean dip.  I think the spices I used were cumin, coriander and a little ground red chili.  Voila.  I found some parsley in the fridge (I don't know how we have fresh parsley in December, but whatever, it was there, so I used some), and decided to put a couple of pieces up there for garnish.  

This was one of the best dishes I've made in quite a while.  And not too much work, since I used premade tortillas.