Curried Chicken Wraps

Cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all (Harriet van Horne, Vogue)

Curried Chicken Wraps

When I was young, I used to be a fussy eater and would never eat anything with spices in. Now I eat almost anything! Of course, there are still some types of food I avoid but my general guideline when it comes to eating or cooking is to be daring.

Using spices is great way of adding flavour, without needlessly adding extra salt. My flavour of the moment is garam masala- I make my own curry using this and other spices. In fact, as my love of cooking grows so seemingly does my spice rack! When I cook with spices, I just shake them in the food and rely upon my own culinary judgement to shape the dish but in the recipe below I have tried to be a bit more accurate with the measurements. Therefore if you feel you want to add more spice, please do so. I do not like using ready-made sauces in my dishes so I spent some time reading up on recipes and experimenting with spices before coming up with the recipe below.  Experimenting can be fun and luckily I haven’t had too many disasters! If like me, you love the dips and relishes you get with poppadoms, you should like my recipe as I combined some of these relishes with the chicken curry and put them all in a wrap. They can be eaten for lunch or dinner and are tasty both hot and cold!

Curried chicken wraps (serves 4)

Ingredients

350-400 grams of chicken (I use chicken thigh fillets)
1 large courgette, chopped into strips of about 7 cm
2 large carrots, grated
Section of cucumber, 7cm long, halved and sliced into strips
1/2 red onion (medium/large) sliced
4 tortilla wraps
4 tbsp. of mango chutney
1 tbsp. curry powder (I use mild but feel free to spice things up more)
2 tsp. garam masala
1 tsp. ground fenugreek
1 tsp. sugar
1tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. whole cumin seeds
1/2 tsp. of hot chilli powder
Splash of lemon juice
Pinch of mustard powder
2 tbsp. olive oil
Bunch of coriander

Method

1. Chop the chicken into small chunks.
2. Into a large saucepan, on a low heat, add the curry powder, garam masala, fenugreek, turmeric, cumin seeds, mustard powder and the chilli powder. Mix for three minutes ensuring the ingredients don’t burn.
3. Add in the oil, lemon juice and sugar. This will make your curry paste.
4. Turn the heat up on the saucepan and add the chicken to the curry paste. Remember to keep stirring so the paste covers all the chicken. Allow to cook through.
5. Grate the carrot, slice the onion lengthways and chop the cucumber into thin strips. Mix these ingredients up in a bowl.
6. Slice the courgettes into thin batons and add to the chicken.
7. Once the chicken and courgettes are cooked, chop up some coriander and add to the chicken.
8. The final part is to assemble your wrap. Heat up the tortilla wraps in the microwave.
9. Spread 1 tbsp. of mango chutney over the tortilla wrap.
10. Take a quarter of the carrot, onion and cucumber mixture and place onto the tortilla.
11. Finally, add a quarter of the chicken mixture over the carrots, wrap and serve.

Hints

• Try chopping the wraps into bite size chunks. Great for serving to guests!
• I often buy chicken in large quantities, chop into chunks and freeze, ready to use when needed. My friend Nikki told me to flat pack the chicken in freezer bags so if you forget to take the meat out of the freezer (like I do!) it doesn’t take such a long time to defrost!

It has taken me a while to buy all the spices in the ingredient list but I started with curry powder and garam masala and just bought the others when I could. The wrap would work with these two ingredients but I like to experiment with new spices. In future, I would love to make my own curry powder mix and my own mango chutney.

Enjoy.