The First Real Kitchen Cookbook: 100 Recipes and Tips for New Cooks

Every year, tens of thousands of hungry twentysomethings graduate college and rent their first apartment. They love food and want to learn how to cook. The First Real Kitchen Cookbook is the just-graduated's go-to guide, explaining in a friendly, encouraging voice everything that can be done on a tiny four-burner stove with minimal equipment and utensils. Fellow twentysomethings Megan Carle and Jill Carle teach new cooks how to stock a pantry on the cheap, buy meat, roast a chicken, cook vegetables, and bake cakes from scratchall the basics and more!

Buffalo Chicken Wrap

Serves 4

1 lb/455 g boneless skinless chicken breasts (2 or 3)

2 tbsp butter, melted

1/4 cup/60 ml hot sauce

1/2 cup/55 g crumbled blue cheese

1/4 cup/60 ml mayonnaise

1/4 cup/60 ml sour cream

Four 10-in/25-cm flour tortillas

1 large tomato

2 cups/55 g shredded iceberg lettuce

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/gas mark 4.

Put the chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap/cling film and gently pound them flat with a meat mallet or the underside of a heavy pot until the pieces are about 1/4 in/6 mm thick. Put the chicken in a baking dish. Combine the butter and hot sauce in a small bowl and pour half of the sauce over the chicken. Bake for 15 minutes, or until cooked through. Cut the chicken into strips 1 in/2.5 cm wide.

Meanwhile, combine the cheese, mayonnaise, and sour cream in a small bowl to make buffalo sauce. Lay the tortillas on a flat work surface and spread the blue cheese mixture down the center of each one. Cut the tomato into 8 slices. Lay 2 tomato slices over the blue cheese on each tortilla and top with the shredded lettuce. Dip the chicken strips in the remaining buffalo sauce and arrange them over the lettuce. Fold in the bottom and top of the tortilla and then fold the sides over to form the wrap. Cut in half and serve immediately or wrap individually in plastic wrap/cling film, refrigerate, and serve cold. 

(Recipe Courtesy of Chronicle Books and Jill Carle)