I find pies, cakes, and cookies relatively easy.
No, lasagna is a pain in the fucking ass. Yes, conceptually, it really shouldn’t be, but in practice, every time I make it it’s a goddamned production. I make it from scratch about twice a year. That means noodles, too. That means that, yes, they need to be pre-cooked. I’ve tried it once without parboiling the noodles, and it ended up a sloppy mess–at least to me. Tasted fine I guess to everyone, but I knew what texture it was supposed to be, and it wasn’t that. And, yes, I’ve also used the no-boil noodles and the regular lasagna sheets as a shortcut, but when I’m in the mood for making lasagna myself, I’m all-in with homemade egg-and-spinach pasta.
I do bolognese, spinach sheets, and bechamel. It is best a task divided over a couple of days, though.
Moussaka is one of my favorite foods, but for me it’s about 50% harder to make than lasagna, so I make lasagna once a year and moussaka every five years.
The rest of the time, I go to the Olympia Kabob House and get my moussaka. It’s good.
Home made egg rolls (big fat ones!) and home made shrimp toast. Dammit!
Lasagna is fine.
But cannelloni or manicotti or whatever it is that involves stuffing those stupid little tubes with food and not breaking them… never again. It’s just not worth the pain.
ETA: Puff pastry. There are situations where rough puff pastry is a better choice than store bought. But you do suffer for the choice.
Home made noodlas, 4 hour Bolognese, Bescamel, various meats and cheeses, ricotta with eggs and spices and parm, yeah it’s an all day process. So we make like 4 and freeze 3.
St Louis? on McCausland?
That’s my vote- it’s not hard to do in a technique sense, but the post-frying cleanup is a total pain.
Yeah. I’m not vastly experienced with moussaka, but I’ve tried Spiro’s, a couple of diner-type places, and a few festivals at Orthodox churches. The Olympia moussaka does it for me, and the Bass on tap is a nice complement.
It seems like most of these are complicated because they require you to make a wrapper and fillings and then assemble or various layers and then assemble. I’ve always wanted to try tamales but everything I’ve read says that it is a whole day thing to make and assemble them. For me, lasagne isn’t hard but I cheat and use jarred sauce. I have made it with and without bechamel but it doesn’t seem that complicated.
My contribution would be blintzes. You have to make the crepes, create the fillings, wrap and assemble then and then fry them. Nothing beats a homemade blintz, though.
Chicken Kiev. I can never get the chicken pounded thin enough to roll them up w/o tearing it. I made it a few times but I finally gave up.
Ravioli and Agnolotti. I love them, and one of the best dishes I ever made was homemade agnolotti stuffed with pork, chicken and spinach.
But God, they’re a chore. You must have filling prepared ahead of time. You must mix up and roll out homemade pasta dough. Then you stuff them (and agnolotti is at least easier than ravioli), then boil them, then toss them in a sauce of some kind.
Then they’re all eaten up in about ten minutes.
Those people have special machines which are used for nothing but making churros. That kind of investment isn’t going to be worth it for home makers.
Cookies in general, ain’t no thang. But there are these chocolate peppermint pinwheel cookies that I only make once a year, partly because it’s a Christmas thing and partly because it’s a lot of effort for maybe two dozen cookies. I can’t really make a bigger batch of the dough, because it’ll overload my mixer. So, I make small batches, and people love the cookies, and they’re gone in minutes.
Chocolate covered cherries. Especially if the temperature is too high and the fondant just becomes a sticky melty mess when you are trying to wrap the cherries.
I’ve made it twice; the last time was 10-12 years ago. It takes a day just to make the ragu, and then you’ve got the meatballs, the eggs, the giant pastry shell. And I used dried pasta; you could make your own for an added degree of difficulty. Then you have to have the right vessel to cook it in (I have a big enamel-coated iron pot). It’s an impressive table piece but a huge production to make.
My mother’s recipe for lasagna took up three index cards, the only recipe to do so. It is completely scratch – the sauce starts with tomatoes – and it was a two day process for her. She would make a triple batch, bake one right away and freeze the other two for later.
I have not had the courage to tackle it.
Any food that requires the application of heat.