I’m a Recipe Thief

• Tweet
• Sumo

• Tweet

I confess. I’m a recipe thief. I just love food, especially other peoples food. I spend far too much of my time at work free time gawking at food. I get loads of ideas for what to cook from the Internet, from magazines, from eating out and from unsuspecting friends. The other night I made a whole dinner based on food I’d seen my friends make.  My attempts at recreating their masterpieces are my own versions because I’m never clever enough to get the actual recipe. And besides, we usually fly by the seat of our pants in the kitchen and make stuff up as we go along. I probably wouldn’t actually follow the recipe even if I had it. I’m a lazy cook who just likes to ‘guesstimate’ instead of actually measuring things.

My friend, Julie, made a great salad for one of our get- togethers and I’ve made it again several times since then. I love this salad. Like, really love it. That’s not something I usually say about salad. Here’s my version of “The Julie Salad”:

Purple Cabbage, Broccoli and Bacon Salad

Ingredients:

• medium size head of broccoli
• medium size head of purple cabbage (I used half a head)
• 1 onion (I used red)
• handful of almonds
• 4-5 slices of bacon
• 2-4 Tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
• 2-4 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• salt to taste (I used about 1/2 tsp.)

What I did:

1. I chopped my purple cabbage in half and put one half in the fridge for a stir fry for tomorrow. I chopped the other half into 4 big sections. I chopped each section individually in my food processor. I did it this way because if you put too much cabbage into the food processor at once, you’ll just end up with pulverized cabbage soup on the bottom and chunks on the top. You can also chop cabbage and broccoli by hand, it just takes longer and I’m too lazy. Put into a large bowl.
2. Chop your broccoli in the food processor. Again, don’t put too much in your food processor at once. Pulse it carefully so that you don’t end up chopping it too fine. Add to your big bowl of cabbage and set aside.
3. Add one chopped onion to the bowl. I used a red one, but any kind would do just fine.
4. Chop up your bacon and fry it up in a pan. I actually chopped up my almonds and threw those into the pan with the bacon, You could also roast them in the oven or you could just chop them and add them into the salad as is. When your bacon is done, add it (and the almonds) to your cabbage and broccoli. Because everything is better with bacon, right?
5. Now pour on your balsamic vinegar and olive oil and add salt to taste. The exact amount will depend on your personal preference and also on how big your broccoli and cabbage heads actually were. I’m a label reader and this is the best balsamic vinegar from Migros (it’s thick and lovely with no added bad stuff).
   

   Oil and Balsamic Vinegar

6. Toss well and dig in. This salad is even better the next day so be sure to make a lot.
   

   The Julie Salad

 

Honey Mustard Glazed Bacon Chicken Fingers

Ingredients:

• 4 chicken breasts, cut into finger size strips
• one slice of bacon per finger strip
• 1 clove of garlic, shopped fine
• 5 Tablespoons olive oil
• 2 Tablespoons of honey
• 2 Tablespoons of coarse grain mustard
• 4 Tablespoons of lemon juice

What we did:

1. Mix your garlic, honey, mustard and lemon juice together in a small bowl. This makes enough glaze for 4 chicken breasts. This is a glaze recipe that we adapted and changed from one of our Jamie Oliver cookbooks.
   

   Honey mustard glaze

2. Wrap one slice of bacon around each chicken finger.
3.  Lay your bacon wrapped chicken out on a baking sheet. Tip: don’t use baking paper or your bacon won’t crisp  We started with the paper, realized our mistake and removed it.
4. Brush each chicken finger with your glaze and put them in a preheated 220C oven for 10 minutes.
   

   Brush on the glaze

5. After 10 minutes, remove from oven, flip them over and glaze again.
6. Return to oven and cook for an additional 10-12 minutes.
   

   Getting crispy

This biggest problem we had was that we didn’t end up with the leftovers that we thought we would. They were just too good!

Do you have a favorite ‘stolen recipe’? Share it with me in the comments so I can add it to my collection…

 

 

 

Print this post...