Recipes

20th Dec 2016

Whopper Cajun Chicken Pita With Smashed Avocado

lovinmanchester

Ingredients

Chicken breast (bone in)
Avocado
Limes
Coriander
Pita breads
Red chilli
Garlic
Cajun seasoning

Here’s an easy and super tasty recipe to try this evening.

It’s a sort of a cross between a brunch dish and a proper roast chicken meal, but it makes for a great dinner and it’s all done in 30 minutes.

Bash this together for yourself and company and they’ll love you forever. All sorts of whopper…

Instructions

Step 1

There are two things you need to make sure of with these ingredients. First, get ripe avocados. The supermarkets try to screw you over with rock hard ones, so spend a little extra. Second, get the chicken breasts with the skin still on and bone in. Crucial.

Step 2

Lash the oven on first thing. This is a big fat chicken breast and you want to start by lashing a load of cajun spice and some oil onto it. Don’t be shy with either.

Step 3

Lash on a bit of salt and pepper with your hands, get the whole thing covered evenly. Make sure your hands are clean though.

Step 4

You want to seal the juices in and get some colour on the bird, so get a frying pan on and heat it up to a high temperature. Throw in the chicken skin side down.

Step 5

Cook it for a few minutes on each side. You don’t need to be fiddling around with it every two seconds either, just let it brown up.

Step 6

Throw it into the oven on a tray at 200 degrees. It’ll take a good 20 minutes, depending on how fat your bird is.

Step 7

While the chicken is cooking, trim the top and bottom off the avocado and peel the bastards. The skin should come off nice and clean if they’re ripe.

Step 8

Chop up the chilli and the garlic. If you want a serious kick to the avocado, leave the seeds in.

Step 9

Chop the avocado, chilli and garlic together to a rough size. Nothing too fine needed here as you want some bite to them.

Step 10

The avocado will really come to life when you squeeze in the lime, add some salt and the coriander.

Step 11

Chop it all up and add the juice and seasoning. Taste it as you go along and add more lime or salt as needed. It’s the one thing home chefs never do, tasting as you go makes all the difference.

Step 12

Most people throw the pita breads into the toaster, but this little trick will make all the difference: smear them with a little olive oil.

Step 13

Brown them in a griddle pan for about 2 minutes each side. If you need to keep them warm, leave them in the oven, but best is to do this absolutely last minute.

Step 14

What a lot of people struggle with is plating their dinner beautifully. Most home chefs make it look like a dog’s dinner, so here are a couple of simple steps. Lash a big generous blob of avocado on the side of the plate.

Step 15

Slice the pita breads at an angle.

Step 16

Pile a few of them on the avocado at an angle, but keep most of them back to serve on the side.

Step 17

At this stage, the chicken should be cooked. People freak out about it being cooked, but the key is to keep it nice and moist as well. Slice through it and make sure it’s nice and white. If it isn’t just lash it back in for another couple of minutes.

Step 18

Carve the chicken into nice slices, making sure to leave the skin on and pile it up on the plate like this. 3 simple elements to this dish, but absolutely fecking gorgeous.

You won’t believe just how good this tastes. It feels like the sort of dish that should be taking hours to cook and that it should be bad for you, but there’s nothing but goodness in here.

Pop into the shop on your way home, grab the few ingredients you need, and throw this together. Thank me later.