Beef salad with garlic, sweet chili and lime dressing

    It's time for the first salad from this project. I inspired myself from a Gordon Ramsay's recipe I once found online and it seemed really interesting, but as I did not have all the fancy ingredients around I gave it a try in my own way, and it turned out to be delicious. To make all the cooking process fast, in general, I buy already made croutons (which is a lazy move from me since I could do myself some really good ones), but it  helps me save some time. I also keep most of the time a stack of meet in the freezer, nicely portioned, and in the morning when I go to school I take one portion out and let it defrost, so when I come back in the evening is waiting for me, ready to be cooked. The rest is just cutting some veggies and mixing the dressing, nothing too complicated or that requires too much time. So let's get started!

Ingredients (for 1 portion):

• 40-50 g croutons ( approx 1 hand )
• 1 hand of cherry tomatoes
• 1 medium cucumber 
• half of an iceberg salad
• 200-250 g beef
• juice from a lime
• 3 garlic cloves
• 2-3 Tbsp sweet chili sauce
• olive oil
• butter
• salt
• pepper

    First I started with the beef, and to make thing even quicker that they already were, I got some

already sliced beef, like it can be seen in the picture (because that is a thing in the Netherlands, you can find everything already sliced, from fruits and vegetables to meat, but that's a story for another time). I cooked the beef in a little bit of butter, with some salt and pepper, until it was done, but not dry, and I set it aside.

    Then I sliced my cherry tomatoes, I peeled thin cucumber strips  and finely chopped the Iceberg salad. I added everything to a huge bowl, added the beef, which cooled down a little bit in the meantime, and the croutons and preceded with the dressing. 

    For this I mashed the garlic cloves, added the lime juice and the sweet chili, and in order to find a balance between tastes and to soften the dressing a little bit I also added about 1 and 1/2 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil.

   What is left is to pour the dressing over the other ingredients in the bowl, give it a good shake, so everything nicely mixes and the crunchy croutons soften up a little bit, add salt and pepper as you wish, and voila, you dinner is ready!

Enjoy!