You missed a great dinner

We had my friend Kevin and his wife Celia over for dinner tonight.  I made beef caldereta and it turned out as good as any I have ever had.  My caldereta is a bit hit or miss as I experiment, ever since the chef at The Boondocks told me his secret was "maraming keso" (lots of cheese).  The nice thing about caldereta is, the ingredients are so good that even if it's a bit off it's still edible.  And when everything comes together just right, like it did tonight, the results are fantastic.  

Here is tonight's recipe, more or less.  You can google recipes with lots more ingredients but I prefer to strip things down to the essentials because I don't see the point in spending added prep time on things that don't really affect the result.

As with any dish you make over and over I didn't actually measure any of these.  But I think I'm pretty close.

2 lbs beef, cubed
1 medium onion or half a big one, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chopped garlic
5 small purple carrots from Rachel's garden, or about 3 boring normal orange carrots
2 8 oz cans of tomato sauce
2 cups grated cheese (that is, post-grating it was about 2 cups)
3 bay leaves 

Throw everything in a wok and cook until the beef is done.  Serve with rice.  Feeds four adults.  Feeds no kids; they would rather have a PBJ.

Notes:

• I suggest adding the cheese just at the end.  It seemed to make a difference tonight.
• Bell peppers and peas are acceptable carrot substitutes for caldereta.
• All the "authentic" calderetas I have had included potatoes.  But since potatoes are nutritionally and tastefully almost the same as rice I omit them in keeping with my no-wasted-effort cooking philosophy.  Just eat more rice with it and it works out.