This is my first WFD diary and only my second diary ever, so …
Peppers, Onions and Beef
You can just imagine the aroma, wisps of steam curling up off it … ripe red pepper chunks, translucent onions, bits of beef, all bathed in fragrant brown broth …
This first one I sort-of-invented back in grad school, when if you could take a pill and get good enough nutrition, I would have. Short of that, and tiring of peanut butter sandwiches, and totally unable to afford to eat out, not even fast food (a term which I don’t remember hearing back in those dear dim dead days), I came up with a quick cheap filling tasty one-pan meal. This is the original version: one cut-up swiss steak (good cheap protein) and pan-fry in a touch of lard (cholesterol? wazzat?), then add one roughly chopped large onion and stir, cover and cook on low (nice old gas stoves!) until the onion just barely starts to go translucent, then add one cut-up green pepper (seeds removed) and continue cooking just until the peppers go limp. The onions and peppers give off enough liquid so you don’t need to add any, just stir occasionally — add a twist of fresh-ground pepper and serve. Pour into a bowl, salt to taste. Serves one.
Nowadays I am making it for two, and scaling it up to freeze for two extra meals: six red peppers (better vitamins), eight medium onions (easier to chop), and a pound of ground whatever … beef sometimes, bison sometimes. We go to Yellowstone N.P. each summer and have bison steaks there, and — they taste better than beef. Really. But just cooking the ground meat in a little water in the bottom of the pot and stirring the rest of the ingredients into it means the meat is equally spread through all the servings: less trouble to cook and no trouble to portion out. And yes, that’s less meat than a standard American meal … but it’s enough to make a lovely broth.
I have another three-ingredient favorite — Apples, Onions, and Pork. Although, in peach season sometimes there are four.
This is one for when you’re working around the house and can check on it from time to time, because pork takes a while to get tender — the smaller it's cut up, the less time it takes.
Take whatever pork you want to use and dissect off the visible fat and tendons and any gristly bits, put them in the pot you’re going to use and render the fat off. Pull out the crispy bits, let them cool, break them up, give them to your fur-people. (Sorry. my nym IS mskitty, okay?) Then take the nice pork and cut it into portion-size pieces — or bite-size, whatever … scrape the brown bits loose from the bottom of the pot, put the pork in, and add just barely enough water to braise the pork, low temperature slow cooking until it’s tender. While it’s cooking, peel and cut up the apples — quarter them and then cut each quarter in half lengthwise and twice across, so — sixths of each quarter is what I do, anyway — still has some texture, not applesauce. And pick apples for flavor, not for crunch — I used Cripps Pink last time, tasty and not as sweet as apples can get; you don’t want a "pie” apple here. See some interesting opinions :
bestapples.com/...
And rough-cut the onions: doesn’t need to be chopped fine, but cut in eighths, and whack the biggest pieces again — easy mouth-size but still has texture. Proportions ... I use six large apples to eight med-large onions plus pork for six people. During peach season, when you have nice ripe peaches, just one good-sized totally ripe juicy peach will add all the extra flavor it can use — two if they're small. Put the apples and onions in together, and when they’re tender — you’re done. It holds and re-heats nicely, but allow at least an hour for cooking.
This doesn’t really need any salt — it's just barely sweet.
I think you could start with either one of these and make up a truly excellent pot of soup. Anyone making soup for dinner? This is soup weather, even down south here in Houston.