Caesar Chicken Wraps

Chicken breast: lean, which is exactly its problem. It has almost no fat to protect it, so it goes from done to dry in the gap of a few minutes you weren't watching. Flouring it before it goes in the dish isn't for crust — there's no pan contact to crisp it — it's a thin barrier that slows moisture loss while it roasts, the same trick as dredging meat for a stew. You're not after a stopwatch reading of 15 or 20 minutes; you're after the fillet feeling firm but still giving slightly when you press it, not rigid. Slice it only once it's rested a few minutes off the heat — cut it hot and the juice runs onto the board instead of staying in the meat.

Anchovies: this is the ingredient people flinch at and then can't name why the dressing tastes flat without it. Mashed fine and melted into fat or dressing, they don't taste of fish — they taste of savoury depth, the same job fish sauce does in a stir-fry. If you genuinely can't get them, a small spoon of fish sauce or a splash more Worcestershire gets you partway, but it's a patch, not a swap — the dressing will be milder and you'll want to push the garlic and lemon a touch harder to compensate.

Parmesan: buy the block, grate it yourself. Pre-grated parmesan is often cut with anti-caking starch and has usually sat around losing its sharp, nutty edge — in a dressing where it's one of only five or six flavours carrying the whole thing, that difference is not subtle. Any hard, well-aged grating cheese with a similar salt-and-savour profile will do if parmesan isn't to hand — Grana Padano, pecorino if you don't mind it saltier.

Butter for the chicken dish and oil for the croutons are doing different jobs, so don't swap one for the other out of habit. Butter under the chicken adds richness and helps it not stick to the dish at these temperatures; for the croutons you want fat that coats the bread and lets it dry out evenly in the oven rather than fry — any flavourless oil or soft butter works, the test is simply that it shouldn't fight with the parmesan and anchovy flavours already doing the heavy lifting.

Crème fraîche alongside the mayonnaise isn't decoration — it loosens the dressing and adds a clean sourness that plain mayonnaise alone doesn't have, stopping the whole thing from tasting heavy and one-note. Soured cream or Greek yoghurt will do roughly the same job if that's what's in the fridge; yoghurt will taste a little sharper and thinner, so don't be surprised if you want it stiffer with a touch more mayonnaise.

Warming the tortillas matters more than it looks on paper. A cold tortilla straight from the packet cracks the moment you try to fold it round a filling — not because it's stale, but because the starches in it are stiff at room temperature and need a little heat to go flexible again. A few seconds a side in a dry pan, just until it softens and you see the faintest blister, is the whole fix. No special equipment, no steaming — this is a flat-in-London kitchen job, done in the same pan you roasted nothing in, because the chicken's in the oven and the hob's free.

This feeds four people generously as a lunch, less if you're serving it after a proper Sunday roast and everyone's still half full from that — in which case cut it down to a starter-sized portion rather than skipping the croutons or the dressing to save on calories. Patience here isn't long, but it's specific: let the chicken rest before you slice it, and don't fill the wraps until everything else is actually ready, because a wrap assembled and left standing goes soggy in the time it takes to call everyone to the table.