Monday 30 November 2015

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



20 comments:

  1. Thankfully I was sitting down when reading your mayo confession Sherry :) Glad you got round to it. Something tells me you're more than capable of whipping up some mayo! It's funny though, sometimes I think we just get used to making certain things and not others. Doesn't mean anything or that we can't! I'm the same with a few things as well.

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    1. i was so damn cheesed off with that mayo Jem.:) I am determined to try it again another day. i won't let it win!

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  2. Uuuuh, this sounds divine! I actually used to make mayo myself. I think the secrets are 1) have all ingredients about the same temperature (no really, really cold egg yolks) and 2) slooowly (!) add the oil while mixing - well, at least that did the trick for me.
    I hope you are feeling better again.

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    1. yes i think you are right about the egg yolk. mine was straight out of the fridge. the thing i think really wrecked it was adding the chillies in at the start. it just curdled and went strange. next time i would make the mayo first and then stir in the chillies. this is a recipe for instant mayo and i have seen quite a few in the blender also but this just didn't work for me. ah well, next time!

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    2. I agree that adding the chilies at the start probably doomed it.

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  3. I had never made mayo and did the stick blender version and it turned out fine so make sure you give it another go another time, when you are suitably recovered. I realise now that much of the mystique behind mayo was because it took so darn long with a whisk. Now we have stick blenders, we can make it easily so make sure you do try again!

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    1. i will definitely try again fiona. the mayo will not win!

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  4. Oh dear, sounds very disappointing sorry to hear that Sherry! Hehe I definitely wouldn't like to make canapes for 50. The idea of making anything for 50 people frightens me!

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    1. i agree lorraine. eek. canapes for 50 is insane.

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  5. Sometimes the mayo does win. I find it's the lemon juice that can ruin it. I try and get a bit of emulsifying done first and then add the lemon super slowly. We've usually made it with a hand whisk and it doesn't seem to take that long but if it splits there is no amount of whisking that will fix it in my experience, even pulling out the stick blender of the jug blender or the cake mix beaters (or whatever they are really called) mostly we just buy mayo though. It's not worth the effort of mucking around.

    I know what you mean about some recipe books just not being inspiring. I'm sure they are to some people, we're all different so we need different sources of inspiration.

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    1. it is interesting that everyone seems to have some issues with katie's book. i just found it completely uninspiring, but you are right- different strokes. i am going to beard the lion in its den again and i will conquer the mayo!

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  6. if you have a stick blender the best mayo recipe is from Annabel Langbein - http://www.annabel-langbein.com/recipes/speedy-mayo/440/. I have used this recipe many times and it has always worked for me.

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    1. funny you should say that, anonymous:) i am in the middle of writing a post about annabel right now. I was checking out her recipe for instant mayo this morning. she is one of my faves.

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  7. There is a small trick to making mayo using a stick blender. Make sure that the cup of the blender is over the egg yolk. Hold it down without moving until everything starts to come together. You can take a look at the recipe on my blog for more help. Hope you try again!

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    1. thanks tandy. i can see from all the comments and posts i have read today that there were several things i did wrong. i was too whizzy with it:)

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  8. Don't give up on mayo, it's a skill worth having. In my working days I'd hand whisk it in 2litre batches, my arm feels tired just thinking about that. As another person mentioned, it's important that all ingredients are at room temperature. If it does split, take a fresh egg yolk, then slowly whisk in the curdled mixture, it should miraculously come back together. I'm done with What Katie Ate too

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    1. hi sandra
      i will give it another go for sure. i want to make it! yep i am over that katie book. just so not my thing. does being blonde and irish mean you will get your book published regardless of the recipes etc? sorry a bit bitchy there...

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  9. I like the look of the book, but have been frustrated because there isn't much I actually want to cook out of it. Many of the recipes seem quite heavy and overly rich.

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    1. yep it is rather disappointing i feel. and doesn't give food bloggers a good name.:(

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