Time consumed with labor, or just overall time between beginning and end?
answer A might be matzo, just because I have to stand over a blistering stove and open and close and mess with it constantly until it’s all done. (but it’s DELISHUS… I call it shiksa matzo)
For pure start-finish, it’s probably turkey, which I first brine, then dry before it ever goes near an oven. About 4 days.
Somewhere, I have a recipe for moussaka that isn’t difficult at all, but it is super time-consuming and it gets every dish in the house dirty in the process.
The end result is very tasty, though. Even if it doesn’t at all resemble the moussaka I’ve eaten in Bulgaria. (I am pathetically unable to recreate the original.)
Hazelnut praline semi fredo (lots of beating & stirring, I beat by hand for this), homemade ravioli (mostly cranking the machine) and risotto (20 min of fast stirring) are about the most demanding things I cook.
proper french onion soup, Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguinon, cassoulet d’isigney [which I have posted the recipe for on the dope a couple of times] homemade glace de viande, and I won’t repeat them again, but I made garum once [roman fish sauce, blecch] and kimchee once [double blecch]
My chillis and pasta sauces tend to involve about 40 minutes slow sautéing, and then two or three hours of simmering down. Once the meat and onions are cooked, I tend to add a few pints of stock and let all the flavours mix in while the excess liquid bubbles off.
It’s a great way to be able to find time to do the dishes; I’m already in the kitchen, so it doesn’t feel like such a chore, and I can break it up with the odd bout of stirring and tasting.
Martha Stewart’s bolognese sauce is a huge pain in the ass to make, but tastes really, really, really good. Unlike anything else I’ve ever had. You need to set aside a whole afternoon or evening to get it done.
The recipe is pretty surreal, too. You start with like a pound each of carrots, celery, and onions… cook for a blue age… add a pound each of about three different ground meats… cook for a blue age… add a whole bottle of wine etc… add a whole quart of milk etc…
Remember the movie Big Night with Stanley Tucci? I’ve made Tucci’s timpano recipe and it takes, like, two days. Making just the ragu sauce takes longer than most normal meals, then you’ve got the pastry, the pasta, the meatballs, the eggs, assembly time, cooking time… I haven’t made it in years; maybe I should try again this christmas.
ETA: Here’s a description in someone’s blog (with photos!) of them making timpano a la Big Night. Yummy!
Dice a carrot, a stalk of celery, and an onion. Sweat with half a stick of butter in a frying pan until softened. Add enough white flour to make roux. When roux starts to dry out, add just enough chicken stock to moisten. Repeat until you have a decent quantity of thick white sauce.
Add 6 chicken cutlets to the pan. Spoon the sauce over them, adding more stock as needed. When chicken is almost done, remove it from the pan and refrigerate. Strain sauce and set aside.
Dice a carrot, a stalk of celery, and an onion. Sweat with half a stick of butter in a frying pan until softened. Add enough white flour to make roux. When roux starts to dry out, add just enough chicken stock to moisten. Repeat until you have a decent quantity of thick white sauce. Strain. Transfer to a sauce pan. Add reserved sauce and heat. Add the juice of one lemon. Season with salt and white pepper.
Heat 1/2 inch of vegetable oil in a frying pan. Beat 3 eggs and set in a wide, shallow pan. Put a cup of bread crumbs in another wide, shallow pan. Dip chicken into eggs, then breadcrumbs, then eggs, then breadcrumbs. Fry until golden and brown.
Heat 1/2 inch of vegetable oil in a small pan. Add 1/4 cup chopped sage. Fry until crispy. Drain on paper towels.
Add a splash of dry white wine and heavy cream to sauce. Heat through.
Serve chicken. Pass sauce in a gravy boat and sage for sprinkling.
Serves six.
Total cooking time: About 3 hours.
Active cooking time: About 3 hours.
Total cleanup time: About 4 hours.
Total angioplasty time: About 4 hours.
I start dinner for the family at 2:30 every day and we eat between 6 and 7, when my wife gets home from work. I do bake bread almost every day, so that takes up alot of the time. I spend alot of that time farting around during that time too. Its been really great staying at home the last few years. I’ve been able to build up quite an arsenal for when I start up a new food operation.
i can’t do the linky thing worth a damn, so i just copied off my recipe. leave yourself a good hour to two hours for this one. it’s seriously tasty and worth even fighting with the prosciutto strips. use the prescribed ingredients, which means don’t cheat with the low-fat stuff. trust me on this! 
Champagne chicken
4 boneless chicken breasts
1 t fresh-ground black pepper
2 t butter
2 t olive oil
1 cup dry champagne (or a bit more)
2 cups heavy cream (or a bit more)
2 ½ cups fresh-sliced mushrooms
6 slices prosciutto, paper-thin
Soak chicken breasts at least overnight in salt water (cover chicken with cold water and sprinkle liberally with salt. Refrigerate). Rinse chicken well and pat dry with paper towels. Trim fat, etc, then cut chicken into ¼-inch wide slices.
Melt butter and olive oil in large heavy skillet. Sauté chicken for 4 to 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, champagne and pepper.
Cook over medium/medium low heat for about 30-45 minutes. Remove chicken and mushrooms from skillet and keep warm. Add cream and prosciutto to remaining skillet contents.
Simmer about 5 minutes until slightly thickened.
Return chicken and mushrooms to skillet and bring just to a simmer. Serve over fettuccini or angel hair pasta bed.
Serves 4 - 6
I have a cake recipe that takes at least 2 days. First you have to make a custardy rum filling, and it has to chill overnight. Then the next day you make the 2-layer cake, probably about a half hour or so active measuring and mixing. Bake. While it’s still warm you poke holes it the top of each layer and pour a coffee and rum mixture over them. Wait until the layers are completely cool. Take most of the filling and put it on the bottom layer. Take the remaining filling, combine with whipping cream and some other stuff (I forget the rest of the ingredients) and beat until it’s as stiff as you can get it without it becoming butter. All the ingredients must be very cold. Put the top layer on the cake and cover over all with the whipped cream/butter rum custardy stuff.
Deeelicious. I haven’t made it in years.
My own sambhar recipe takes about 2 hours - you have to chop all kinds of veggies, make all the masalas from scratch, toasting some, but not others, then you have to temper, then cook, etc.
I also have an awesome yeast roll recipe that has a cold proofing time of 48 hours, though it’s not much actual work.
I just remembered - my lasagne recipe takes a long time to make, too. I make my own red sauce and my own bechamel. If I’m doing a shortcut version, it takes about an hour start to finish; if I’m doing the whole nine yards, closer to two hours. I only remember because my husband asked for it this weekend.
I also have a Martha Stewart cake recipe that is pretty time-consuming. The cake itself is just an orange-flavored poundcake, but you’re supposed to slice it and layer it with this pastry cream that you have to cook very very slowly lest it scorch. And it really likes to scorch. And then you top it with a fresh berry sauce. It’s really delicious. If you don’t scorch the pastry cream and have to start all over again. Not that that’s ever happened to me.
I made a chicken alfredo lasagna last Saturday that was rather time intensive. Cooked/sliced the chicken, cooked the vegetables, made the bechamel, par-cooked the pasta, sliced/shredded all the cheeses, and then built the damn thing.
It was out of this world. Totally worth it.
First, yes you can absolutely freeze fresh pasta dough. I make fresh pasta once a week or so and always freeze half the batch. The frozen half is just as good as the “fresh” half.
I love to make stews, braises, and soups on the weekends and then freeze them for weekday eating. I find the key to making most of those dishes awesome is simply to let them simmer longer. So I usually do some recipe on Sundays that “takes” five or six hours, but the truth of it is that usually I can get all the active work done in half an hour to an hour, and the rest of the time it’s just sitting on the stove. Beef Bourginon, Flemish beef stew, chili…these all fall into that category. The first time they take longer, but once you know what you’re doing, the prep work is simple.
Oh yeah, I make that Cook’s Illustrated French onion soup. It’s AMAZING. Takes forever.
It’s on our roster for upcoming things we wanna make soon - Mr. Horseshoe brought it up the other night. And I came into the thread to say that I made the Cook’s Illustrated (sheeee, they’re getting a lot of shout-outs in this thread!) chicken pot pie once - it starts with a whole raw chicken that you take apart yourself, so it’s very much a from-scratch deal. Delicious, but with the pie crust and everything it took me the whole damn day to make it.
I know make a streamlined version based on the best/most useful segments of their recipe - they direct you to brown the chicken and then build the sauce in that fond, and that part of the recipe builds great flavor, definitely. But I knock a coupla hours off the total recipe time by pulling a Pillsbury pie crust outta the freezer.
Mr. Horseshoe loves enchiladas so he occasionally makes a batch with homemade sauce that he’s made the day before 'specially for it. So technically, there’s a 24-hour turnaround time on his enchilada recipe!
I used to make some really good steamed dumplings. It took half the day and all of the countertops, but they were the best I’ve ever had.
My Christmas cookies are a pain in the neck.
The recipe is a chocolate butter cookie, it’s not terrible for cut-outs, but you do have to be somewhat mindful with each and every cookie (it’s not like a sugar cookie recipe where you can really crank them out).
Then, the decorating. Jesus. I use Martha’s pipe and fill method with Royal icing. You can do colors, but a few years ago I hit on this awesome idea of making them white on white to save time on changing colors.
Final decorating piece is dusting with sugar.
I think the cookies are about two hours, and then the decorating is another four, at least. And I’m used to doing the pipe and fill, it definitely took longer the first few times I did it.
I will say the final product is MAGNIFICENT, in both taste and looks.
I don’t have an ounce of Italian blood but I have a recipe for a pretty authentic red sauce or “gravy” that I make maybe twice a year. Involves cooking down a chuck steak, a few pork ribs, and a piece of veal until falling apart, then adding tomatoes and everything else until it’s a a bubbling pot of red lead. My kitchen looks like a crime scene when all is said and done but I get enough to freeze for quite a while.