Spiced Poppadom Crusted Chicken Wraps with Raita, Pickled Red Onions and Mango Salsa
This was a bit of an experiment but turned out surprisingly well. In fact, its one of my favourite recipes I’ve written. I wanted to come up with a chicken wrap recipe which had all the flavours of a curry but had crunchy chicken breasts as it’s centrepiece. The chicken was so moreish - crunchy, slightly spicy and lovely and moist inside. With punchy mango salsa, cooling raita, sharp pickled onions, sweet chutney and fresh lettuce, these wraps are full of texture and flavour. They are also perfect for leftovers the next day (that’s if there will be any left). This would make a great Friday/Saturday night meal.
Serves 4 (£2.95 per portion)
1. Finely slice a red onion and add to a bowl with 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, 1 tsp sugar and a sprinkling of salt. Mix well and set aside.
2. For the chicken, slice four chicken breasts into 2cm strips and add to a bowl with 2 tbsps of tikka masala curry paste and a good dollop of natural yoghurt. Add the juice of a couple of limes, season and stir so the chicken is well coated.
3. Scrape out the seeds from a cucumber and grate the flesh. Place in a sieve and season well with plenty of salt - allowing it to drain while you get on with other jobs (the salt helps draw out the excess moisture from the cucumber).
4. For the chicken crust, crush 1 tbsp of coriander seeds and 1 tbsp cumin seeds in a pestle and mortar. Add to a bowl with 8 crushed poppadoms, 50g dried breadcrumbs, 1 tbsp nigella seeds, 1 tbsp of curry powder and 1 tsp of turmeric. Mix well and coat the chicken pieces in the crust before shallow frying in some sunflower oil over a medium/high heat until crispy, golden and cooked all the way through (make sure the pan isn’t too hot or it will just burn). Drain the scraps from the crumb on some kitchen paper and sprinkle over at the end.
5. For the mango salsa, chop the flesh of a mango into chunks and add to a bowl with half a bunch of finely chopped coriander, half a red chilli and a good squeeze of lime.
6. Once the cucumber has lost a lot of its liquid, add to a bowl with 200g natural yoghurt, 1 tsp of mint sauce and some chopped fresh mint if you have it. Season and mix.
7. Assemble your wraps with the raita, onions, some iceberg lettuce, mango chutney and finish with the salsa, chicken pieces and a sprinkling of the scraps from the crust. Enjoy!