Chicken biryani is delicious and infamously complex to make.
Agreed. A coworker’s mom makes a giant batch every so often, and sells it. I’m first in line for lots and lots, because I happily eat it for a few days.
A lot of Indian cooking is time consuming, especially if you have to make ghee first or a from-scratch garam masala. Then there’s the toasting and grinding of spices, and the multiple steps involved in the cooking.
Actually, a full-on Thanksgiving turkey dinner can be time consuming, and even stressful if you’re having lots of people over.
I don’t do dropped dumplings because, according to my husband and MIL, that is a “Northern heresy.” It would be a phenomenal waste of food and time in this household.
I understand that such dumplings are tasty though more like biscuits.
ETA: Using canned biscuits in chicken and dumplings might be grounds for divorce around here. Not a risk worth taking. 
Flat dumpling shortcut: cut flour tortillas into strips. Not 100% identical to rolled dumplings, but not bad at all.
Oh, while we’re at it, from-scratch mole (which upon review now, I see has been mentioned). Now there are less complex and more complex moles, but I’ve made mole poblano, mole rojo, and mole negro, and they really are a bit of a pain. I really have to be in the mood to make it, and usually I end up making mole amarillo, which is much less complicated (and, well, a good bit different than those three.) Mole negro oaxaqueno is probably the most complex recipe I’ve ever made. Not necessarily difficult, but a lot of steps, a lot of ingredients, various cooking techniques, lots of dirtying up pots and pans and the cleanup that entails. A fun project when you’re in the mood for it. I find from-scratch Indian and Thai cooking to be a snap in comparison.
They are, indeed, more like biscuits if you use that type of dough (which I do for chicken and dumplings.) Flat, rolled out dumplings I just call “noodles.” To me, dumplings are little balls of dough or bread, either naked or filled. To me, it needs to have a three-dimensional shape to be a dumpling. Am I the only one who makes this distinction? I would call something like what you describe as “chicken and noodles,” but I know that it does usually go by “chicken and dumplings.”
ETA: Apparently, there are others who make the distinction, according to Wikipedia:
So I guess it’s not just me (but maybe the northerner in me. 
)
Mine are kinda soft and poofy, because I add a little baking powder to the dough. And an egg. So the edges crumble off and enrich the soup.
I always thought of chicken and dumplings as a Pennsylvania Dutch thing, but I first made it from a recipe in Cheryl & Bill Jamieson’s TEXAS HOME COOKING, in which they specified drop dumplings. I see that John Egerton’s SOUTHERN FOOD, which I consider the best cookbook/reference book for the region, calls for rolling, cutting and drying the dumplings. Also no egg, which would make a much stiffer and tough dough.
Chile Verde.
My favorite Mexican place for Chile Verde is about 30 minutes from my house. I could drive there, eat it, and drive back home TWICE in less time than it took me to make it. Man, was that a lot of work. I came out fantastic, but I’ll probably never make it at home again.
In NYC I occasionally see dried packaged extra-wide egg noodles sold under the name “dumplings.” Possibly imported from Philadelphia, or some other distant exotic land.
Last week I made a single-serving bachelor dinner of what could be called “Lazy Ass Chicken and Dumplings.” Put the veggies in a saucepan with some chicken stock and simmered for an hour, added some cold chicken I had poached earlier in the week, and a handful of wide egg noodles. Turned off the heat and let the noodles swell up and absorb most of the broth, then stirred in a tablespoon of flour whisked into a quarter cup of milk.
Not too shabby. The broth thickened into a sauce. Kinda like a chicken-vegetable casserole in a saucepan.
My (Appalachian) family makes a dish of chicken with thick dough-strips, but for some reason I can’t fathom, we call it “chicken pot pie”.
Anything venison. First you have to kill the deer, then it’s all work work work from there.
I made similar arguments 25+ years ago. I lost that one, obviously. :rolleyes: Actually my dough does swell a little in the broth, and the flour thickens the broth, too. So, even though I cut the dough into noodle-shaped strips, I don’t consider them to be noodles, which don’t noticeably swell up when boiled. To me, chicken and noodles would be more “casserole-y” or a true chicken and noodle soup. shrug
Most all of 'em.
Pasteles. So labor intensive Puerto Ricans usually only make it for Christmas. The kind of dish that you need to gather the whole family together to make. But, in the right neighborhood, you can buy them two for $3 or a dozen for $20.
So, so delicious.
What’s the difference between pasteles and tamales?
Never heard of a pastele, but a quick look at wiki says that they’re wrapped in cabbage and banana leaves. Tamales are wrapped in corn husks. I didn’t get far enough to see what the filling in pasteles are. Though something tells me if that’s what’s on the outside, the inside will be more South American than Mexican. I’m guessing fruit is involved.
And for my entry, and I know this is silly, but Cookies. If at all possible, I’ll convert the recipe to bar cookies. I’d just rather not roll all the cookies, clean my hands, put the pans in the oven, pull them back out, wait for them to cool, put them on a wire rack, scoop out a second batch, wash my hands, but it in the oven and then convince myself to just toss the rest of the batter so I can just let that batch cool on the pan since 4 pans of cookies is more than enough.
I’d rather make bar cookies or a cake or cup cakes. I’ve mastered the art of cooking and baking without getting my hands dirty. Of course, a lifetime of working in food service and several trips through food safety classes means I keep gloves at home*. But making cookies with gloves on doesn’t work that well.
*I always suggest people keep (vinyl, not latex) gloves at home. It makes life so much easier. Cutting hot peppers, put on gloves, cut the peppers, toss the gloves. No worries about rubbing your eyes later that day. Working with raw meat. Put on gloves, rip it out of the package, do what you need to do with it, put any utensils you used into the already opened dishwasher, remove gloves right into the dishwasher and everything is as sterile as it was to begin with, no handwashing before or after (home use only, don’t do this at work).
Makes life so much easier.
Hell, changing the oil on your car/snowblower/lawnmower/motorcycle, it’s a lot easier to toss on a pair of gloves than to try and wash off grease and oil or smell like a mechanic for the rest of the day.
Doing some (dirty) plumbing work…gloves.
Working with fiberglass insulation…gloves.
Gotta put on that (I know) Prep.H…gloves.
Staining some woodwork…gloves
Doing just about any dirty work with gloves on means you don’t have to wash your hands afterwards. Seems like half the time, even if you do wash your hands, they still stink for the rest of the day.
Pick some up, they’re really good to have around the house.
There are banana leaf tamales, too.
Oh, I thought of another one. There’s this Cuban snack I grew up on called Bollos.
They are so addictive, but you have to soak black eyed peas overnight and then remove the skins. That is a pain in the rump.
Then you create a paste with the peas and garlic and form small little balls and deep fry them.