The person of interest watched their first ever episode of the Great British Bake Off (GBBO) last week as a favour to me but enjoyed it so much that we now have a weekly GBBO standing date. Yesterday we decided to make something summery and different from our usual frugal options of pasta, rice or potato based meals. We looked in my cookbooks and couldn’t agree on anything so in the end we made up this dish – chicken pita pockets with potato salad and coleslaw.

Ingredients (from Asda) – recipe for 4 (we took the leftovers in for lunch)

• Mini chicken breast fillets (1 pack)
• White (or brown) pita bread (1 pita per person)
• Peppers (1 red and 1 yellow)
• Sweet and crunchy ranch salad mix (this item made me feel rather ill because it was unnecessary, we could have made our own salad)
• Red onion (1)
• Mushrooms (half a pack of closed cup)
• Spring onions (3 stalks)
• Celery (2 sticks)
• Vine tomatoes (2)
• Soy sauce (to taste)
• Italian herb seasoning (to taste)
• 2 table spoons of oil (in this case I used vegetable oil because I already had some)

Method

• Chop red onion, vine tomatoes and spring onions into whatever size you like
• Slice the celery, peppers and mushrooms into whatever sizes and shapes you like
• Cut the chicken into thin strips
• Sauté the chicken and red onion till the chicken is cooked then add the mushrooms, peppers and some spring onions as well as some soy sauce and Italian herbs
• Bring to the boil and then simmer until chicken and vegetables are infused with the flavours (we did this for about 20 minutes)
• Toss the salad mix, vine tomatoes and the rest of the spring onions in a bowl (we left out the celery as I can’t stand it but this was added later on)
• Toast the pita, slice it open to create a pocket and stuff it with the vegetables (and the salad as the person of interest did)
• Plate with some of the vegetables, potato salad and coleslaw (these created the most fabulous salad mix ever)

Verdict: Last Saturday, I realised that I’d eaten only onions, tomatoes and spring onions by way of vegetables for the whole week. Quite galling! So it was nice to eat so many different vegetables in one meal. It also was light and refreshing with our accompanying Bucks Fizz and GBBO inspired toffee cake dessert.