Mole
+1 for dumpings. folding is boring and labor intensive.
I make cassoulet every year for a large party and I have to start three days in advance.*
The first day is butchering and meat prep.
The second day is the start of beans and a ragu.
The third day is assembly and a final cooking.
In all, it is upwards of six or eight hours of work which is well worth it.
- Technically, I start six months in advance because sometimes I make my own duck confit and the best confit is at least six months old…
My mom’s rum cake…but it’s always worth it.
That’s the revised version. In the original one, first you had to steal the chicken.
Mine is about the same except that I also make meatballs to go with it. It’s pretty much an all-day affair, although it doesn’t require constant attention. Sort of like Thanksgiving turkey dinner in that regard.
Hockey Monkey: I’ve made literally thousands of lumpia in my life, but I never use eggroll or wonton wrappers, as they’re too thick. I use lumpia wrappers, made for the purpose, and they are one class-A beeyatch to peel apart. Once you get the hang of it (after 300-400 or so), it goes pretty fast.
I also make something that my mother called “perushka”, known in different parts of Europe as different things (pirogi, peroshki, etc.). This version is made with a raised dough that is then rolled out, cut into rectangles, and made into packets filled with a meat/veggie mixture with rosemary. Then they raise again and are deep-fried. They’re to die for, but it’s another all-day affair, it seems.
Goetta. It’s a German peasant dish made of oatmeal, ground beef/pork, and spices. You have to stir it for several hours while the water boils down and it thickens. If you don’t give it a stir every 2 or 3 minutes, the oatmeal will stick to the bottom and burn. Royal pain to make. Personally, I don’t care for goetta very much but my family loves it.
Next would have to be Buckeyes - delicious peanut butter/butter/confectionary balls dipped in chocolate. It’s not hard to make them, but very time consuming. You have chill the dough overnight and then roll out the dough into balls, which are supposed to be the size of buckeyes (duh). I always get sick of rolling midway through and they gradually get bigger and bigger.
All these recipes have me drooling. I’ll have to take note of some of them for a free weekend!
Jambalayais my most labor intensive. But this is mostly due to my usually poor preparation procedures. Once, I actually made sure that everything was properly cut, chopped, opened or uncorked and it went really smoothly and quickly.
I could never put up with all the effort you guys go through just for a meal.
This is kind of stupid but I think that making tacos for one takes an awful fucking long time for the amount of time you spend eating them afterwards. And I’m not talking anything fancy here, just the boxed shells and packet of seasoning.
Cook meat, drain meat, season meat. Chop lettuce, chop tomatoes. Drain olives. Shred cheese or fiddle with the “easy open” bag. Heat shells.
Put leftover meat in a container. Put leftover lettuce and tomatoes in a container. Find a container small enough for olives.
Clean meat pan. Clean cutting board and knife.
Figure out a way to shove all that meat and toppings into the tiny shell which I think get tinier every time I buy them.
Then finally you manage to eat two or three little tacos and it takes like 10 mins and you think about how, really, you could have gone to Taco Bell twice in the time this took and spent $3 and had your tacos.
Ok sorry that didn’t really fit with the thread. But I think tacos are my favorite way to eat ground beef but I never eat them and it makes me sad.
When I cook, I often do so ridiculously.
The worst example: for one dinner party I did a confit of guinea fowl leg. It took 10 hours constant checking the goose fat with a thermometer. Did it overnight and slept on the kitchen floor with an alarm set for every 30 minutes. The quiche for starter had quadruple-baked pastry and took three hours. Dessert was a brioche crust lemon tart made from scratch, which took two hours kneading/proving time before baking.
But fucking hell it was a good meal.
Make sure it’s a long weekend!
Zsofia, what takes so long with the onion soup recipe? Just cooking down the onions?
I have a recipe for it from the Wayside Inn cookbook. Besides onions, just heat up some beef stock and add a splash each of sherry and worcestershire sauce. Easy peasy and tastes just as good as any I’ve ever had.
That’s what I love about that cookbook. Authentic old-timey New England cooking made very simple.
cries where are norinew and** Athena**!?
I’m obviously not Zsofia, but I linked to the Cook’s Illustrated recipe, and it is indeed the caramelization of onions that takes a long time. It really is worth the time and effort, in my opinion. The onions turn a beautiful chocolate color by the end of the cooking time, and have this sweet and almost beefy taste to them. I can eat the onions just on their own, they are so good.
There’s nothing complicated or difficult about the method–it just takes a while.
(On today’s menu, Flemish beef carbonnade simmering away, which should be ready in about 3-4 hours.)
Well, and the chopping of the onions takes awhile because you have to take so many kleenex breaks!
My mom got me onion goggles as a joke one Christmas because I cry like a baby when I chop onions. But they work so well! If I’m chopping a lot of onions, I always put them on. (Then I chase the kids around the house while wearing them.)
The original cooking down of the onions happens in the oven without your supervision. But then you spend ages deglazing the pan again and again. Trust me, if you try it you won’t go back to your “add stock and call it a day” recipe. It’s fantastic.
My family has a recipe for cookies that get made for Christmastime. It is an extremely labor-intensive project for how much gets made, but they are extremely good.
First, you mix all dough ingredient together. This includes a bunch of butter and some flour alogn with a little of some other stuff, and tools are only usable to initially get the butter separated. The dough has to be practically kneaded together with your hands, and will take so much effort that they will likely start to ache. Once it’s all mixed together well, you separate it into 8 balls and refrigerate them while working on other things for a couple hours.
One thing to do doing that time is to prepare the “glaze” - it consists mainly of whipped egg whites along with powdered sugar and cinnamon. At least now we have electric mixers to whip the egg whites; I can’t imagine using a hand mixer after the effort needed to mix the dough. You also will need to prepare a decent amount of mixed (granulated) sugar and cinnamon; I noticed this year you can buy such a concoction at the grocery store. Also, grind up some walnuts.
Once the balls of dough are chilled, spread some powdered sugar on a surface (we use a specific wooden board for this; I’m not sure what’s necessary), then roll out the dough as thin as possible. Being chilled lets it be rolled finer and not stick to the rolling pin. Then use a brush to apply the egg white glaze to the dough, sprinkle on some of the cinnamon & sugar mixture, and sprinkle on some of the finely ground nuts. Then cut it the dough radially into 16 pieces, and for each piece roll it up sorta like a crescent roll. Place the rolled up pieces of dough on a cookie sheet, and apply more cinnamon & sugar and egg white glaze to the top. Repeat 8 times. Bake.
Makes 8 * 16 = 128 cookies, which are 1-2 inches long and a half inch wide. Takes pretty much all day. But the effort is worth it - they taste absolutely incredible.
We also make some cookies that are squeezed out of a press that looks like it was made in the 1950s. They’re also labor intensive due to needing to precisely squeeze out the dough for each cookie through the pattern into shapes of Christmas trees, pinwheels, and possibly others though mainly those two. The press only holds so much dough, and it takes quite a few reloads to go through one batch - each reload requiring you to take apart the press. These cookies are decorated with colored sugar and nonpareils. They are just barely worth the effort, but they do provide more holiday spirit.
I make samosas for parties, and it’s a lot of work- making the filling, making the dough, rolling and stuffing and finally deep frying.
Really good, though.
Ze goggles! Zay do somesing!
I nominate Christmas cookies as an all-day affair. Sometimes two days, if the dough needs to be chilled.