Recipe help?

[trinityofone]

So, I am wanting to try to learn how to cook more. The problem is that every recipe book or site I consult, even when I am specifically looking for "quick & easy" type recipes, seems to assume that I have money for fancy ingredients (no) or already own fancy equipment (really no). Bah! Bah on them and their Chilean sea bass and their food processors and grills. I turn to you instead for advice!

Do you have any favorite recipes you'd be willing to share? Specifically, quick, easy, and CHEAP recipes?

Here's what I do not have:

1. Very much money.
2. Very much equipment.
3. Very much skill.

On the plus side, however, I like almost everything. Except beets. I HATE BEETS.

So, any non-beet, non-expensive, non-excessively difficult involving twelve types of pans and a magic wand you could share with me?

In return, here's my favorite, failproof recipe. (Well, failproof unless you are siriaeve and hate cheese. Sorry.)

ROMAN HOLIDAY
a.k.a., OMG Trin, you are a BAD JEW

Ingredients:
1 box penne or rigatoni (I used to prefer the latter, but have since been reconverted to the former)
1 pound ground beef (I've also made it with both ground turkey and with that fake vegetarian soy beef stuff, and both versions work pretty well)
1 large package of American Cheese (I like the Kraft Deluxe, as it is not individually wrapped in plastic. That is some B.S.)
1 jar tomato sauce
1 large yellow onion
salt and pepper

Start water boiling for pasta. Dice onion—my mom dices it finely, but I suck at chopping, have cheap knives, and like big chunks of onion anyway so that works too. Saute onion in a deep pan with olive oil. Add beef in chunks without thinking of the latest episode of SPN. Add a dash of salt and pepper; cook until beef is browned and onion is soft.

The water is probably ready by now, so add the pasta and cook as directed by the package.

Cut the cheese into cubes and distribute on the bottom of a large casserole dish. Add beef and onion mixture. (You can drain the grease first if you want, but I usually don't bother. It's flavor! Also I am gross.) When pasta is done, drain and add. Struggle with the stupid jar of pasta sauce for a ridiculously long time; when it finally opens, pour it over pasta. Stir. Put lid on casserole dish and place in oven, which if you are like me you have probably forgotten to preheat to 350°. But whatever, this recipe is almost impossible to screw up. Cook for 20ish minutes. Basically, you want the cheese to be all lovely and melty and bubbly. Stir and serve. Reheats really well. (But better in the oven than in the microwave, turtlespeaks!)

I should add that this is a Depression-era recipe of my (not Jewish) great-aunt Hopie, who passed away this past December. It was originally made with macaroni, Velveeta, and canned tomato soup, so in comparison, you can feel really sophisticated eating the current version.

Also, if through some odd cosmic circumstance, I was ever given the opportunity to seduce Dean Winchester, I would make him this.

So yes, please hit me with your own failproof recipes! And, er, it should be mentioned: I like healthy stuff, too. I love vegetables! (EXCEPT BEETS.) Mushrooms are good! Or, well, just about anything. I only know how to make this casserole and like three other dishes. It's sad.

Comments

[stereowire.livejournal.com]

Something I have recently become enamored of is making frittatas! The prep can be a little time-wastey but they are uncomplicated, delicious, and you can sneak a surprising amount of vegetables in. Plus they reheat well. You will need one skillet and one baking dish. Or maybe you're lucky and have an oven-safe skillet, in which case that's all you need and I seethe with jealousy from across the internets.

Ingredients: anything in your fridge you think would taste good with eggs. Bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, leeks, tomatoes, spinach, asparagus, potatoes, seriously it doesn't matter. Sausage or bacon, something that will produce a lot of fat while cooking. Anywhere from five to eight eggs depending on the size of your baking pan and how much food you want to make.

Cut up all everything into similarly-sized pieces-- I go for a 1/4 to 1/2-inch dice usually.

Crank the oven up to 350-375F.

Fry up your bacon or sausage first. Set aside but leave the liquid fat in the skillet-- you shouldn't need any more oil than that. Leave the heat on medium-high and put in your vegetable ingredients according to how long they take to cook-- i.e. potatoes, broccoli, asparagus first, onions or peppers later, mushrooms or tomatoes or spinach last. (Actually potatoes should be boiled first before they go in the skillet, unless you use hash browns. Which I do because I'm lazy!) Season to taste. I'm a fan of rosemary and paprika and an ungodly amount of black pepper.

When everything is more or less cooked through, mix the bacon or sausage back in and spread it all evenly in the baking pan. Start beating eggs with a little bit of water-- about a tablespoon per two eggs. You want enough liquidy egg-water mixture to mostly cover all your other ingredients in the baking pan, about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. I always load up on vegetables and use just enough eggs to hold everything together because I don't actually love eggs that much, but you can make this recipe really heavy on the egg if you like.

Bake it until you can stick a fork in the middle and have it come out clean, which is about the same time that the edges get all golden-brown and crispy.

Let it cool a bit, cut it up like it's cake and eat the hell out of it.

[stereowire.livejournal.com]

Also, the easiest beef stew recipe in the world!

You need:
As much beef stew meat as you want to eat for one meal plus leftovers for however many days you can stand to keep eating them (look, I got this recipe from my dad who got it from my aunt who got it from god knows where-- I'm pretty sure it's not a traditional chinese dish! Anyways, point is, we don't measure things in my family, we just make arbitrary decisions about how long we think we might want to keep eating any given dish)
Tomatoes
White or yellow onions
Soy sauce*
Sugar
optional: cooking oil

Cut the meat into 1/2 to 1-inch cubes. Put it in a large saucepan or soup pot, cover with cold water, bring to a boil. Drain and rinse (with warm water!) in a colander, then dump it back in the pot.

Cut the tomatoes and onions into big chunks-- 1 or 1 1/2-inch is fine because they'll break down. I think I use something like... three or four fist-sized tomatoes and one or two medium-large onions to about half a package of beef stew meat? I'm good at eyeballing but bad at actually figuring out measurements. Anyways, you should have like three times as much tomato and onion as meat. Seriously they'll cook down like crazy.

Optional step: saute the tomato and onion lightly with oil and a little garlic. (My dad told me to do this but... I did it once and never again! And it tastes fine without it.)

Cover the meat with the tomatoes and onions in your saucepan and just douse the whole thing in soy sauce-- you want everything to come out about two shades darker than it went in. Start with about a tablespoon of sugar and go from there, it's supposed to just cut the salty-acidness of that much soy sauce and tomato juice, not turn it into dessert.

Cook it on medium-low heat for a few hours, covered. When the beef is falling apart and the tomatoes and onions have been reduced to their constituent atoms and your kitchen smells delicious, it's done.

Goes well over plain white rice, or if you're like me and too lazy to even make rice, throwing in one or two potatoes (in 1-inch chunks) at the beginning will make it even more filling.

* Your garden-variety Kikkoman should be fine, but if you've got a decent Asian grocery somewhere, keep an eye out for something called 'dark soy sauce' or 'mushroom flavored soy sauce'. It'll be very very dark and almost gritty-looking compared to regular soy sauce-- a lot more viscous, almost sludgy. It's more concentrated so it'll give flavor without adding a bunch of liquid that you'll have to cook off.