Jamie's Food Revolution Hits Hollywood

Give your chicken a Mexican makeover with Jamie Oliver's fajitas

Jamie: "A griddle pan gives the nice, charred effect you want with fajitas, but you can also use a large pan or wok. If you use a griddle pan keep the ingredients moving about so that nothing burns or sticks to the bottom. Normally I wouldn’t recommend adding extra oil to a hot pan, but in this case it’s good to give everything a drizzle now and then so the chicken and peppers stay nice and shiny."

Serves 2

• 1 red pepper
• 1 medium red onion
• 1 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, preferably higher welfare
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• a small pinch of ground cumin
• 2 limes
• olive oil
• freshly ground black pepper
• 4 small, or 2 large flour tortillas
• 1 x 150ml tub of good-quality low-fat natural yoghurt
• 50g Cheddar cheese

For the salsa

• ½–1 fresh red chilli, to your taste
• 15 ripe cherry tomatoes
• a small bunch of fresh coriander
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lime
• extra virgin olive oil

For the guacamole

• a small handful of mixed-colour cherry tomatoes
• ½-1 fresh red chilli
• a few sprigs of fresh coriander
• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 lime

1. Put your griddle pan on a high heat.

2. Halve and deseed your pepper and cut it into thin strips. Peel, halve, and finely slice your onion. Slice your chicken lengthways into long strips roughly the same size as your pepper strips.
Put the peppers, onion, and chicken into a bowl with the paprika and cumin. Squeeze over the juice of half a lime, drizzle over a lug of olive oil, season a good pinch of pepper and mix well. Put to one side to marinate for 5 minutes or so while you make your salsa.

3. Finely chop your chilli. Roughly chop your tomatoes and the coriander, stalks and all.

4. Put the chilli and tomatoes into a second bowl with the salt and pepper and the juice of 1 lime. Then stir in your chopped coriander.

5. Use a pair of tongs to put all the pieces of pepper, onion, and chicken into your preheated pan to cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until the chicken is golden and cooked through. As the pan will be really hot, keep turning the pieces of chicken and vegetables over so they don’t burn – you just want them to lightly chargrill to give you a lovely flavour. Give the pan a little love and attention and you'll be laughing.

6. To make the guacamole squeeze a handful of cherry tomatoes on to a board. Finely chop up the flesh with ½ -1 red chilli and a handful of coriander leaves, including the top part of the stalks.

7. Halve and stone the avocado, then squeeze it over a board so the flesh comes out of the skin. Discard the skin. Squeeze over the lime juice and chop everything together until fine. Taste and adjust the flavours if needed.

8. Warm your tortillas up in a microwave or a warm dry frying pan. Divide your warmed tortillas between your serving plates. Halve your remaining lime and squeeze the juices over the sizzling pan.
At the table, carefully help yourselves to the chicken and vegetables straight from the hot grill pan. Just be sure to put it down on top of something that won’t burn, like a chopping board.

9. Serve with bowls of plain yogurt and guacamole alongside your Cheddar, a grater, and your lovely fresh salsa.

© Jamie Oliver

Photography © David Loftus