The Tastiness:Time Ratio

It goes without saying that nobody wants to spend time in the kitchen making food that's not delicious. We want to spend scarce cooking time making things that will be tasty for ourselves and others. It's also true, though, that effort and and tastiness don't always correlate. That is, it's often the case that making a more difficult or time-consuming recipe doesn't necessarily result in food that is tastier. Difficult recipes may be more rewarding, sophisticated, or any number of other things; but the food's not always going to be better.

I've always tried to have a few recipes that are particularly good investments; those that aren't very hard but result in a lot of tastiness. For me, key properties of these recipes include: ingredients that store well, so I'm likely to have them on hand already (no shopping), minimal prep (no more than a couple minutes chopping or dicing; no rolling out dough, etc.), and relatively short cooking time.

I wish sometimes that cookbooks would take this into account and give some indicator of time vs. tastiness.

Here are a couple of my favorite examples of very easy, very tasty recipes:

Key Lime Pie: A good key lime pie is always a great dessert, and they're easy as, well, pie to make. Make a crust out of graham crackers, sugar and cinnamon. Then put egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk and key lime juice (bottled juice results in a delicious pie; freshly squeezed is better, but not hugely so) in the food processor. Pour in the crust. Bake until set. Uber-tastiness.

Eggs and Curry Leaves: For a quick and wonderful brunch dish, throw a bit of oil in a pan and saute some diced onion, 1 minced thai chili, a bit of ginger paste, and 5-8 curry leaves. Then add 3 or so eggs and cook until the eggs are done. Apart from the onion, all of this stuff can be kept in the fridge or freezer for a while. Again, uber tasty and super quick.

Other examples?