Beef Stroganoff
The genius of beef stroganoff is that you get something that looks and tastes a lot like some kind of beef stew, but in much less time, and with the surprise flourish of tender, rare strips of steak instead of the expected (though also good) flavor and texture of stewed beef. The part where you cook the strips of steak in small batches is totally key — if you try to fake it by doing it in bigger batches, you won't get the big payoff. You can use any amount of beef, but unlike a stew, this recipe scales in roughly linear time with the size, so more than a few pounds of beef could get kind of tedious. (The recipe is keyed to 1 pound.)
This recipe relies on tender beef — it works a lot better with rib or loin cuts (e.g., filet, strip) than with other cuts. You could make it a lot less expensive by using chuck instead of loin and braising the beef in the oven for a couple hours, but at that point you might as well just make stew.
( I was considering posting a photo, but beef stroganoff doesn't really look like much. Here's a recipe. ) 
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