Timpano (like in the movie “Big Night”). It makes lasagne seem boiling-water simple.
Making the sauce alone takes a half day, with tomatoes, onions, seasoning, and ribs and stew meat (the meat is used for flavoring and is not used in the assembly of the timpano).
Then, you have to make the crust which is like a savory pie-type crust. The it is filled with cooked pasta, meatballs (you have to make those too), hard boiled eggs, the sauce, and some other stuff that escapes me. Cook it for a long time.
It takes like a day and a half to prepare. I’ve eaten it twice in my life and made it once.
I should point out that my antipathy towards preparing any dish has nothing at all to do with how much cutting up of stuff or cooking time is involved - it stems solely from the agony of the clean-up process.
Eggplant Parm…Having to cut the thing into thin slices, dipping them in egg then in bread crumbs then to the frying pan! By the time the thing is put together, my kitchen looks like it exploded!
Tacos like my mother used to make. It’s a bunch of different things that have to be made separately – heating the refried beans in one pan, cooking and seasoning the meat in another, then chopping the tomatoes, the lettuce, the onions and avocado, then grating the cheese and finding the taco sauce and sour cream… All kind of a pain. But worst of all is doing the taco shells – my mom didn’t go for the hard shells, which are super-easy, or flour tortillas, which can be heated in the microwave – Mom always used corn tortillas and fried them in a little oil in a small skillet. I hate standing there with the pile of tortillas and a plate and a stack of napkins to stick in between each fried tortilla. It’s tedious and messy (the oil spatters all over the stove) and kind of dangerous (I often get a minor burn preparing these tortillas)… So delicious, though – when I want a taco it’s one of Mom’s tacos that I want. In fact, I’d very much like one right now!
I’ll happily make the spanokopita, the minestrone, the lasagne and the cream puffs if someone else washes up.
I’ll continue cooking roasts if someone can tell me how to do so without dirtying two baking dishes plus a minimum of 4 saucepans (we always have at least 5 other vegetables in addition to roast potato and roast pumpkin with our roasts).
I googled “tamales” yesterday, and I may one day attempt making them - but only if the kids are washing up.
Is it really that hard? I only ask because I was thinking of giving it a shot in the next few weeks. It’s one of the things I love to eat but haven’t ever made.
I’d have to say lasagne for the thing I love to eat but hate to make. I’m a scratch cooker, so everything takes time when it’s a dish like that.
I don’t mind fixing hardshell crabs (take a pot, add water, add crabs, add spices, cook), but eating them is a tremendous pain. The work involved for the meat is too tedious, I almost always end up with Old Bay in my eye, and my hands reek for days. Plus, I almost always drink too much beer. Mother, on the other hand, can sit and pick crab meat for hours, making a little pile on her newspapers, gabbing with the other folks and sipping beer. Then, when she’s got the equivalent of the Mt. Everest of crab meat, she starts eating it.
