Recipe: Chicken-Patty Pockets

For Spring Break this year we're having a "staycation".  No big plans, just going with the flow while the kids hang out with their friends.  One plan, is to spend some time in the kitchen as our daughter is having trouble reading through instructions at school.  My hope is that learning to follow a recipe may help?

Yesterday, she had 2 friends over for the day.  While they played at the park, I flipped through the April 2010 Everyday Food  (I love this magazine!) and spotted a good recipe for lunch on page 38, "Emeril's Chicken Patty Pockets". 


After the park we headed to the grocery store for the ingredients.  I told the girls what we needed and let them find where everything was (ground chicken, parsley, mint, cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes, pita pockets, onions).

I have found that when our daughter has more than one friend over at the same time, I have to keep them engaged a bit to prevent any drama (i.e. "she won't play with me, we're bored, they don't want to play what I want to play").  While this doesn't happen often, they were tired from sleepovers the night before and that could only lead to trouble ;o)  Keep in mind, when she has friends over the rule is no TV or electronics and it's free play all day.

Her friends love to cook and I've put them to work cooking many times.  I break down a recipe and give each of them a job.  This recipe required lots of chopping, snipping of herbs and prepwork so there was a job for everyone to do.  Making the patties with the ground chicken made for lots of "eewww!" but they liked getting their hands all dirty.

They had fun and the patties cooked up in a flash (4 minutes each side under the broiler).  It took some time to figure out how to cut a pita pocket (seriously, I've never done this) but we eventually clued-in how to do it.  It's nice that the girls see me learning and figuring out how to do stuff too.  We ruined 4 pita's before we figured out how to get the pocket.  Um, I finally figured out that you just have to cut them in half then open them up.

These were spicy!  Our daughter eats Thai food and found the patties very spicy.  Next time the kids make them, we'll reduce the Cayanne Pepper to 1/4 tsp. to see if that helps.  The kids still ate at least one patty each and said it was delicious.  My husband and I thought so too :)  I froze the leftover patties for future lunches.

Isn't that pretty how the made the recipe look like it was printed onto a tea towel?

UPDATE 15-Mar-2010

I took these to a MOMS Club Recipe Club event where we were featuring appetizers and had the pita's cut into pockets on the side. It was a hit! I'll include the recipe for the Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies you see there later this week.

 

Enjoy!  Sarah

from the book "The Animal Fair"

Stories and Pictures by Alice and Matin Provensen

1952 Western Publishing Company