Chicken Wraps With Chipotle Mayo And Salsa

Chicken, mayo and chillies?  Yep sounds good to me.  This is a terrible confession for a food blogger but I have never made my own mayonnaise.  I know!  I can hear you gasp from here.  I did think for a minute when I saw this recipe that I would use bought mayo, but then I thought better of it.  So for the first time in living history, you will find me attempting home made mayo.  Plus a few other bits and pieces:=)  

I am making my version of this recipe from the book What Katie Ate; Recipes and other Bits and Bobs by Kate Quinn Davies.  This is the final book of the year being perused and used in The Cookbook Guru Book Club.  Everyone is welcome to join in!


ingredients:

500g. chicken breast tenderloins (or fillets cut into strips)
2 limes, zested and juiced
1 large clove of garlic, crushed
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs of mint leaves, roughly chopped
sea salt and black pepper to taste

chipotle mayo:

1 egg yolk
1 tbs lemon or lime juice
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup (250mls) of light olive oil - I used 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/2 of peanut oil 
2-3 tinned chipotle chillies, finely chopped
2 tsp sliced pickled jalapeño chillies, also finely chopped

chunky salsa:

4 ripe tomatoes
1 red onion
1 green capsicum (bell pepper)
salt and pepper
1.5 tbs sherry vinegar (or whatever vinegar you have)
2 tbs olive oil

To serve:

8 tortilla wraps
2 avocados, sliced or diced
handful of coriander leaves
mint leaves (optional)
lime wedges (optional)


Method:

Place the chicken tenderloins or strips in a shallow baking dish

Make the marinade by whisking the lime zest and juice, garlic, oil, mint, salt and pepper in a small mixing bowl

Pour the marinade over the chicken, cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge for 20-30 minutes

Put all the ingredients for the mayo in a narrow jug and whizz with a stick blender till thick and smooth

Cover and place in the fridge till needed

Bake the chicken strips at 180C for about 10 minutes (take the clingfilm off!)

De-seed the tomatoes and cut into wedges, slice the onion finely, and chop the capsicum into small chunks

Place them in a bowl; add salt and pepper, vinegar and olive oil and toss together

Warm the wraps in the oven for a few minutes on low-about 170C

Each person can make up their own wrap by spooning on some chicken pieces, mayo and salsa in the middle of the wrap
Add avocado slices, coriander leaves, mint leaves if using and extra lime squeezed over if desired

Fold the bottom of the tortilla over the filling, then fold one side to the middle, then the other side so you have a tortilla envelope

Serves 4

Tips:

Jalapenos can be bought in a jar at the supermarket (I got mine at IGA)
Chipotles may not be easy to find; I bought pepper chipotle sauce at Coles, and organic salsa de chipotle at an organic grocer - Katie says you can use the sauce instead, so there:=)

If you want to make the mayo by hand (eek!), whisk the egg yolk, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a small but deep bowl; gradually add the oil and keep beating in till it is thick and smooth; then stir in the 2 kinds of chillies which will need to be very finely chopped

Katie's recipe asks for chicken fillets to be beaten thin, marinated and grilled, then sliced.  I don't have a grill so I figured baked tenderloins would be the go.  (Whisper, whisper - you could even chop up a roast chook from the shops).

whisking the marinade

baked for 11 minutes 

trying to make mayo!  

disaster struck!  Huge mayo failure (sorry about the thumb)  

Well folks, my first go at mayo was a disaster.  It simply would not emulsify no matter what I did.  Mr P. googled it for me, so I added more juice and another egg yolk, and I kept beating but nothing happened.  After 30 minutes of pulling out my hair and lots of swearing, I took the advice Mr P. found for me, which was - sometimes the mayo wins! 

So yep bought mayo it was!  Just add the finely chopped chillies and seasoning to a cup of bought mayo.  I squeezed in a bit of lime juice for flavour too.  We like it hot in this house so I added both types of chipotle sauce to the mayo.  I kept adding it till it was hot enough, but start with a couple of teaspoons. 

chipotle mayo   

ready to wrap and roll! 

It may be heresy to say this, but I am not a huge fan of this book.  I don't really like the well-worn look of it, or the dark pages.  And I am not fond of the heavily styled look of the recipes. Sure it can be attractive, but after a few pages, everything starts to look the same. 

But more importantly, I had to go through this book at least half a dozen times before I found a recipe that appealed to me.  Katie says that she is one of those people who likes to make canapes for 50 (!); clearly she is a person who likes detail and repetition, which I am not so keen on.  

I'm afraid it was all a bit of a disaster for me trying to get this recipe up as I fell prey to a ghastly virus last week.  (And of course the Great Mayo Disaster didn't make me any fonder).  Perhaps that has coloured my view of the book, but sadly I have to say it ain't my fave and it is happily going back to the library this week.  

red and green jalapeños