I come to this board after mucking around (again) with filo pastry and spinach and cheese, and it occured to me that the things I most love eating are the things I MOST hate preparing.
Spanokopita that involves brushing each sheet of pastry with melted butter/oil and the mess that ensues.
Dim-sum that involves placing tsp’s of mixture onto little bits of wonton pastry, then rolling them up, then cooking the buggers.
Pastitso that uses every pot in the house to cook up the noodles, the meat sauce and the bechamel sauce, and takes effing hours…
Actually, it’s not the preperation that I hate so much as the cleaning up after. That bit really sucks, and so I mainly stick with one-pan dishes.
Recently, we had a frozen vegetarian lasagne for dinner one night, and it was so delicious that I decided to make my own. It took a lot more trouble than I would normally go to for a evening meal for the two of us, but I thought it would be worth it. At the end of all that effort, it came out ok. Not great, no where near as good as the frozen one, and it cost so much more in terms of time to prepare as well as money that I’ve thrown the recipe out. Bah humbug!
What reprise said. I found a recipe for some really nice lasagne that I make from scratch – pasta and all. Tastes great but takes me the better part of a day to make.
Hornazo. Kind of like a Spanish pasty (rhymes with nasty, okay? I’m not eating nipple covers here). It’s filled with chorizo (or garlic kielbasa, since chorizo is tremendously expensive) and hardboiled eggs. The recipe I have has this fantastic crust that calls for dry white wine. It bakes up shiny and hard.
Cazzle, I have YET to have a purchased lasagne that tastes anything near as good as a home cooked one.
What brand was it?
But yeah, making stuff yerself nearly always costs more than buying the pre-made variety.
{b]Reprise** I find roasts the easiest to make…once you’ve bunged the meat and the veggies in, you can rest easy for a couple of hours, and you only have to worry about the gravy/sauces at the last minute…I call them my ‘convenience’ meals!!
Yah roasts are easy… I hardly get a chance to make them though…
My fave? Cabbage rolls… take darn near forever to make and are annoying because the sour cabbage irritates my hands… but when finished… yummy! I could eat TONS of them (note: they absolutely must be sour… sweet? gag me!)
kambuckta, no idea! By “recently”, I meant “this past Easter weekend”. It was a family size one, it cost about $11.00, it was in a green box and it was from Coles. That’s all I can tell you I’m afraid.
Dressing. My mother’s recipe. It is wonderful stuff, but a pain to make.
I have to make the cornbread (2 batches)-from scratch. Make the biscuits (2 batches, 1 for the dressing and one for the kids to eat on)-from scratch and then chop onions and celery and mix all that and everything else and then it takes another hour or so of oven time.
I’ve prepared my late mother-in-law’s date pudding recipe twice, and it makes an incredible mess. You have to disassemble and chop the dates. Everything within arm’s reach gets sticky-gooey. The finished pudding is delightful, but gaaack, what a mess.
Right now I’m juicing pomegranates for pomegranate jelly. That involves splitting the skin without leaking juice all over, picking out the little fruit-covered seeds and keeping the membrane out of there, putting the seeds in a fine strainer and using a juice reamer to squish them all, and collecting the juice. You can’t imagine what a pain this is.
But noooo… I saw the recipe and thought I just had to make homemade pomegranate jelly as part of my Christmas presents. I’m thinking if anything’s going to ruin my otherwise disgustingly cheery and early holiday spirit, it’s this.
cassoulet. I had cassoulet for the first time in 1980 or so. In a lovely small French restaurant uptown NYC. It was the greatest thing I had encountered to that point. So, as soon as I got home I got out my Joy of Cooking, and decided that was my next cooking project. It took hours just to shop for the ingredients. And my memory is that I spent the best part of a day in the kitchen. And, of course, mine wasn’t as good as the restaurant’s. So I gave it up. Until now.
I just pulled down my Mark Bittman (thanks, UKE, and others). He says I can do a respectable one in 2-3 hours.
Time is not of the essence, if I’m in the mood to cook something specific (I love to cook!). I can’t think of anythng I’ve ever cooked where I hated the process itself. It would have been much nicer, though, to have company and/or help the first time I made stuffed grape leaves, as I did not realize that a 2-lb. jar of grape leaves would make enough for an entire Syrian village wedding, not just the baby shower for which they were indended, and would take an entire evening to roll up.
I rarely begrudge any time/energy spent on preparation, but I HATE washing dishes! I need to meet a guy who hates cooknig, but loves washing dishes.
