Chicken Pitas

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Chicken Pitas

Feeds four people.

4 chicken breasts, cut into bite sized cubes or strips
1 medium onion. Or half a big one. Or whatever.
Fresh garlic (4 cloves for normal people, I use 8)
Olive oil
1-2 tbsp crushed rosemary (to taste)
1-2 tbsp marjoram (to taste)
White wine
2 chicken bullion cubes
Nan bread or pocket-less pita bread.
Shredded cheese
Feta cheese
Romain lettuce

Here’s the process. You take a big frying pan. You put enough olive oil in it to coat the bottom. Get it hot. When it starts to smoke a bit, dump in your onion and fry it until it gets translucent. Then, dump in your chicken, the rosemary, the garlic, and the marjoram. Sear the chicken. When the pan starts to glaze (you still have the heat on high, right?), pour a splash of white wine into the pan (1/2 cup maybe? I don’t know..) and reduce the heat. Put the bullion cubes in at this point, allowing them to dissolve in the wine. Stir the whole mess a bit, making sure the wine stays simmering. If your chicken pieces are bigger, you may even want to cover it at this point to make sure the chicken cooks fully before the wine reduces away. If they are smaller, and you’re confident they’ll be done before the wine goes away, then don’t cover. I know, decisions, decisions. If you’re conflicted, cover it for 5 or 6 minutes, then pull the cover off and reduce the wine all the way. Worst case scenario, you overcook the chicken a bit, but over-steaming chicken really doesn’t hurt it that much.

Okay, once the wine is reduced more-or-less completely*, pull that puppy off the heat. You’re done with the chicken.

Steam your pitas in a steamer, or, the redneck way by covering them with a wet paper towel and microwaving them. Either way, if you over-do it, you’ll get rubbery, crappy pita bread, so watch it.

Then, you spoon-a da chicken onto da pita, and then you add-a da cheese (I like feta, but you can use whatever cheese floats your boat) and da lettuce. I also like to add a drizzle of Caesar dressing, but just a little bit, to moisten it up some. Then, you eat it. Mmmmm.

Best served with olives on the side and a Caesar salad with the little shrimpy things in it. And some kind of wine. I’m no connoisseur, but I would suspect that those that know about these things would suggest a dryish white wine, like a chardonnay, but I’ll just drink whatever is laying around the house, including beer.

*I had an idea where I didn’t reduce the wine all the way down, and instead used a strainer spoon to get the chicken out of the wine, and used some cream with a bit of corn starch dissolved in it to thicken up the wine/olive oil/chicken fat/pan glaze mixture left over into a sort of savory sauce/gravy thing that could also go on the pita. Haven’t tried it yet, but I will try to remember to update you when I do to see if it works.