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!

15 minutes project

    Approximately one year ago my life changed completely, as I moved to another country, 2000 km away from home, to go to university. Translated, all my habits, all the things I was familiar with and everything that I used to grow up with literally went away over night. I found myself forced to suddenly be an adult, and, in the confusion and stress that occurred in the beginning ( and in the months after, if I am to be honest) I was going a little crazy as there were too many things to do and too little time, basically my time management and approach to every-day activities was screaming for help. Some of the things that considerably changed were, of course, cooking and eating.

    Back home I had time to lock myself in the kitchen for hours, to experiment fancy dishes, to cook for my family, to clean everything after that and to still have plenty of time and energy. After I moved to The Netherlands, this situation changed to 180 degrees. There were, of course,  occasions where I was gathering with my friends and we were cooking together, or I was cooking for them, but there were also plenty of days, especially around midterms and finals, when I was coming from the University at 9 or 10 in the night, desperately hungry, with no energy or willingness to cook anything.  The good news were that I could order any time, or eat frozen food for the supermarket. The bad news were than after couple of weeks you just get sick of eating fast food, you realize how much money you spend on that and it all stops for good when you notice you re not fitting in your favorite jeans anymore. ( happened more than once :( )

    Considering all the above, I came up with the idea of a healthy, quick and tasty solution, so here I am introducing my "15 minutes project". I am going to share my cooking experience by posting a series of salads (and not only) which take no more than 15 minutes, have some super tasty ingredients and dressings and which are also versatile enough, not only in terms of taste, but also in terms of ingredients. There's veggies, meat, some carbs, all meant not only to look good in the plate, but also to properly fill you up.

* I would like to show me greatest appreciation to my best friend and flatmate, Angela Negru, who provided this beautiful bowl that made all of these photos possible. Also, she is the one that is always by my side in the kitchen, we often cook together, share ideas and taste each other's dishes. So Angie, thanks for being a part of this project and part of my inspiration.