It's Nothing Like - Chicken Fajitas

One of our favourite mid-week meals is It's Nothing Like Chicken Fajitas. We enjoy the mix of tastes and textures that you get when you bite into a filled tortilla. It's pretty healthy and quite quick to cook too.

Nothing Like Chicken Fajitas

Ingredients

Two skinless chicken breasts

Two medium onions

A green pepper

A red chilli

Two ripe tomatoes

A juicy lime

A couple of stalks of coriander

Pinch of paprika

Sprinkle of oregano

A good glug of olive oil

A squeeze of lemon juice

Two pinches of salt

A splash of Worcestershire sauce

A glug of dark soya sauce

A small chunk of cheddar cheese

A tub of sour cream

You can use any onions though I usually use one red onion and one brown-skinned one.

I always prefer to use plum tomatoes.

You might know coriander as cilantro.

A glug is about the same as a tablespoon full. A good glug is somewhere between two and three tablespoons.

If you don't have a lime, you could use a lemon but a lime definitely tastes better.

Equipment

A good quality, heavy bottomed grill pan.

I use a large Circulon frying pan that has very low ridges. I can use it both with and without oil. It was a wedding present.

Method

Cut the chicken into finger-sized strips and but in a shallow dish.

Add a splash of olive oil, the squeeze of lemon juice, the paprika, and oregano then mix well.

Cut off about a quarter of the red onion and save it. Thickly slice the remaining onions.

Heat the glug of olive oil in the grill pan using very low heat. Once the oil is hot, add the onion and cook slowly. The aim is to soften the onion and bring out it's natural sweetness.

Now finely chop the onion that you saved and add it to a small bowl. Squeeze the juice of the lime over the onion.

Halve the tomatoes lengthways and discard the seeds. Similarly de-seed the red chilli unless you enjoy the hot chilli taste.

Finely chop the tomatoes, the chilli, and the coriander. Add them and a pinch of salt to the onions and lime juice. Stir and set the bowl aside and give time for the ingredients to cook.

Half, de-seed and chop the green peppers and them to the onions cooking in the grill pan. The onions should be nice and soft and starting to caramelise. 

Quickly grate the cheddar cheese into a serving dish and pour the sour cream (or part of it) into another serving dish.

When the peppers have just lost that completely raw look. Turn the heat up high so that the peppers retain a little crunchiness. Add the Worcestershire and soy sauces, stir and cook until the onions turn dark brown and the dish is almost dry. (This should be a couple of minutes at most.) Turn the peppers and onions into a serving dish.

Quickly clean the grill pan and heat it over a high heat. Once the pan is very hot, reduce the heat a little but not so much that the pan's temperature drops. Add the chicken strips one at time. Don't overcrowd the chicken strips in the pan. Cook the chicken strips on all sides until they are just fully cooked through uit no more or they will dry out. One a strip is done, transfer it to a serving dish.

Let the chicken stand for a few minutes before serving.

We eat these Nothing Like Chicken Fajitas with wholewheat tortillas.