Chicken and chickpea pitas
Fifteen minutes, one pan, and a tahini sauce loosened with honey.
At a Glance
Story
Warm flatbread in a damp paper towel, not a dry oven. A minute in the microwave wrapped in something wet steams the crumb soft enough to fold without cracking along the crease. Dry heat drives moisture out instead, which is right when you want a crisp base and exactly wrong when the bread has to bend around a filling.
Ingredients
- 10 oz chicken breastcut into bite-size pieces
- 1 × 15 oz can chickpeasdrained and rinsed
- 3 tbsp roasted garlic pestojarred is fine
- ½ tbsp za'atar
- 2 pocketless pitas or flatbreads
- 3 tbsp garlic-tahini sauce
- ¼ cup labneh
- 2 tsp honey
- 1 Persian cucumberquartered lengthwise and sliced
- 1 ½ oz fetacrumbled
- ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 lemonquartered
- mint leavestorn, to finish
- olive oilsalt, pepper
Method
Everything overlaps here, so read it through once before the pan goes on. The sauce and the cucumbers happen while the chicken cooks.
- Pat the chicken dry and season. Large nonstick pan, a drizzle of oil, medium-high. Chicken in one layer, undisturbed, 3 to 4 minutes.
- In with the drained chickpeas, the za'atar and the garlic pesto. Season. 3 to 4 minutes, stirring, until the chicken is through. They will pop. Off the heat.
- Meanwhile, three small bowls. Feta with a drizzle of oil and the pepper flakes. Garlic-tahini whisked with the labneh, the honey and the juice of two lemon wedges. Cucumber with the rest of the lemon juice and a little oil. Season all three.
- Wrap the pitas in a damp paper towel and microwave 1 minute.
- Build: pita, chicken and chickpeas, cucumbers, the spiced feta, a heavy spoonful of the tahini sauce, then mint.
The honey in the sauce reads as savoury against the za'atar. Trust it and do not cut it back.
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