Same here.
Mine (and I’m sure yours too 
) kick serious ass with indiscriminant authority.
But it takes hours.
We do it 3-4 times a year, and it’s about that time.
I came up with an odd shortcut for this a while ago. Prep all the ingredients, then dice it together and use it as the filling rolled up in phyllo dough. Brush with butter and bake. Presto, chile relleno phyllo burritos, with a lovely golden-brown crispy outside. Not exactly the same, but quite tasty, and definitely easier to put together, as long as you’re used to working with phyllo.
My grandmother’s jam shortbread cookies. The dough is a bit hard to work, and you have to roll them out, cut them out, then cut holes in half of them, spread jam on the whole ones, top them with the cut-out ones, seal the edges; it takes forever for not many cookies. But oooooh, they’re yummy.
Chicken & Dumplins
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Cook the chicken
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Wait forever for it to cool
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Pull the meat from the bones
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Seperate the fat from the broth
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Mix the dumplin dough
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Knead the dough
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Let the dough set
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Roll out the dough
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Cut the dough into dumplins
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Mix the broth with other ingredients and simmer
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Add chicken to broth mixture
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Add a few dumplins to broth
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Wait until dumplins are almost cooked and add some more
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Repeat
Pieroghis. I don’t really mind making them, but I can never make just the kind I like (potato/cheese). My mom wants sauerkraut. LilMiss likes desert pieroghis. Sis wants meat/potato. When my stepgrandma died her son chucked out the pieroghi folder so they’re entirely homemade - although last Xmas LilMiss did the sealing and the boiling.
I also whine a bit when steak paprika is requested. The prep isn’t bad, the length of the process is.
Lasagne is not a big deal anymore, granted I don’t make the noodles. I do make the sauce though. It gets made so often in my house that it’s old hat. Ditto cheesecake. I will say some recipies are putzier than others though. Last Xmas I made a tiramisu cheesecake that was a pain in the keister. Stupid ladyfingers wouldn’t crush.
Same for me.
I made the mistake of making lasagne for my in-laws family reunion, now whenever one of them comes to town, I’m obligated to make it again.
And with the size of my wife’s family, that usually means at least 2 pans at a time.
The chinese dumplings made me think of fried won tons. That’s another not really tough, but very time consuming.
I made them last New years and the damn dogs got ahold of about 20 of them.
Lasagna was the first thing that came to my brain when I saw this thread. That’s why I like to order it in restaurants.
My wife does that.
She says she’s just trying to find one as good as mine, but she has yet to do it.
But I know that in an italian restaurant, she’s ordering the lasagne.
From scratch carmels, carmel apples, carmel popcorn. Does anybody see a patern here. mmmm carmel
Pasties.
I started at 2:45 yesterday afternoon. I’d already pre-cut the meat but had to recut some of it. At 6:45 I took the last bunch out of the oven. My kitchen was a mess. And I only made a double batch.
I love to make my own pasties so that I can include chorizo and jalepenos. But it’s such a hassle I only make them 2-3 times a year. But I always make them for the annual “drunken guys weekend”. Nothing like pasties to settle down about 10 hours of beer.
Krumkake.
Wonderful stuff, but I have to dedicate a whole afternoon/evening and about a 6-pack of beer to making a triple batch. The dog loves it - there are a lot of mistakes in the first batch.
whistlepig
Not to hijack, but I would love to get a recipe for these.
I love pasties. I’m lucky enought that I can get good ones near my parents and i don’t even have to go to the U.P.
But I’d love to try to make my own.
Thanks.
French Onion Soup.
My dad came up with a recipe that is the most incredible bestest-best French Onion Soup. I have never had any restaurant’s version that even came close. But it takes about 6 hours to make my dad’s recipe, so I usually just make one big pot maybe twice a year and freeze the remainder.
Let’s see, what isn’t a pain to make?
An incomplete list of foods I (and/or family members) love, but take forever and use way too many dishes:
Enchiladas (there’s the pan for the sauce, and then the pan to cook the chicken in, and the frying pan for the tortillas, and…bah!)
Lasagna
Split Pea Soup (it seems simple, and it only uses one pan, but the prep time is staggering)
Scalloped potatoes (with the chopping and layering and cooking for hours)
Bread - it’s not hard to make, but I never seem to plan ahead far enough to get it done before midnight.
Pie. I make pie only for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my father-in-law’s birthday.
I love falafel, but I really hate cooking the little patties. They always turn out too oily or mushy.
I know you can buy ready-made ones, but they just don’t taste right.
I have made homemade Austrian/German Strudel on a few occasions.
The dough is a bitch! You need a whole table to work it on and a tablecloth saturated with flour, it’s a big mess. Working and stretching the dough to a transparent, paper thin, thickness is delicate and frustrating work. It always tastes good and I do a passable job but I think to perfect my technique I’d have to make it a couple dozen more times, at least.
Yep. That’s why I opened this thread, in fact. I love fried stuffed artichokes, but they are such a bother to make that I always just boil them instead.
As for chicken ‘n’ dumplings…I roast a chicken on a rack, we eat roast chicken the first day. When I put up the chicken, I skin and bone it, and let the skin and bones simmer for a while, and put any pan drippings in the stockpot. Then I put the strained broth in the fridge. The next day, the fat has risen to the top and cooled into a nice firm layer which can be very easily removed. If I had a bigger family, I’d roast two or three chickens at a time. Generally we get three meals from a chicken, or two meals and sandwiches.
I made cannoli from scratch exactly once. Never again. Between the mess that was left in the pot after making the filling, and the mess created by the shells, it was one of the worst clean-up jobs I’ve ever had to undertake. It was early in my cooking “career,” so I probably ought to give them another try, but the memories are just too traumatic.
Every year at Christmastime I make Empire Biscuits. They’re a PITA, but soooo good. This year, I have a stand mixer, so that should take a little of the labor out of the process.
Grape Pie
It’s almost impossible to buy this anywhere (the only places I’ve seen that have it are in Upstate New York, nwear aples, where they have a big Grape industry, in the Fall.) It’s extremely labor-intensive, as you have to remove the seeds from all the Concord Grapes. Unlike the case of cherries, where you can buy a cherry stoner, there is no machine that can do this for you.
I made one last night. Our daughter MilliCal helped me peel the grapes (a much easieer task than it sounds, if you know how). We mixed up a batch of filling, then I made the crust from scratch*, and finally put it all together and baked it. Took a couple of hours, but it’s worth it, and it’s the only way to get a Grape Pie.
- I’ve baked at least one Grape Pie a year ever since I learned about them, living in upstate NY. In Utah it was hard to find Concord Grapes, but I found a family that had them and let mwe pick them in exchange for a pie for them. After I delivered the pie, their only comment was “You used a box crust, didn’t you?” It was true. Pepper Mill, years later, taught me how to make a crust from scratch.
A dish my mother called “perushke”, which is probably a bastardization of a Russian or Polish food name. Anyway, they are basically deep-fried sweet bread rolls filled with meat. The dough has to rise, then the little meat packages have to be made, which is a total pain in the ass, then they have to rise again, then deep-fried and drained. But, man, are they heaven.
Lumpia: Just peeling the wrappers can make you suicidal.
Shrimp Creole. (Cajun style).
Heavenly dish. But dicing the onions, bell pepper and celery; peeling & deveining the shrimp; carefully making the roux; correct seasoning, simmering…a lot of work.