Lasagna is fairly labor intensive if doing it from scratch. That’s one of the more complicated dishes I make. I’m not sure how “regularly” I make it, though. Is once a year regular enough? Spinach lasagna made from scratch, homemade bolognese, and besciamella. And for the bolognese, I need to have homemade stock at hand, as well.
None of it is particularly difficult, but it’s a multi step process that involves making a few things separately and assembling them together at the end. If I want to make it from scratch for dinner at 5 p.m., I got to get it started by about noon, at the latest. Luckily, you can make the bolognese well in advance, if you’d like, which does save a lot of time and fuss.
I regularly make a chicken Caesar salad from scratch, and that usually takes up most of an afternoon.
I make my own croutons out of ciabatta, and I usually have to make twice as much as I’ll need because Mr. brown snacks on them during the run-up to dinner.
I grill some chicken breast, soft-boil a couple of eggs, grate up a buttload of real Parmesan cheese, and make homemade Caesar dressing in a blender. Then I tear up 1.5 heads of romaine lettuce into a big salad bowl and put it in the fridge. At the last minute, I assemble it all.
It’s time-consuming, but worth it. Usually I’m triggered into making it because one or the other of us ate a crummy Caesar salad somewhere and we need to eat a good one to “erase” the bad one.
Since you used the word regularly, I would say either pasta from scratch, or braised scallops (seared then braised in white wine sauce served with sautéed mushroom slices and shallots). I’ve made stuff that’s more complicated but not regularly.
pulykamell summed it up nicely. An everything from scratch lasagna can take several hours to finally get in the oven. Having components frozen ahead of time just means that it was broken down into smaller parts.
Ditto for Athena’s enchiladas. Those sound delicious btw. Feel free to invite me for supper any time.
There’s probably something more complicated that I’ve made, but the only one I really remember is runzas.
Interesting lasagna fact.
If you put one lasagna on top of another lasagna, you still have only one lasagna.
Usually something like pan seared sea scallops (when I can afford them, very rare these days) atop or around a serving of a curly endive salad with stick cut grannysmiths, diced smoked bacon and a brown butter and truffle vinaigrette topped with shaved parmigiano reggiano. The vinaigrette is probably the most complicated, but it’s not too bad.
Same here for a single dish. Not really all that complicated but very time consuming since I make a huge pot full each time. Whole meals can consume an entire day starting at 0 dark 30 to get everything done.
Yes, you’re quite right. I always make the meat/tomato sauce in the slow cooker and usually make it the day before. I tend to think of lasagne as the assembly and the components aren’t really complicated (to me), but you’re right about it being time-consuming.
If you interpret regularly rather liberally, then the most complex thing I make is Chicken Kiev.
Buy thin sliced chicken, beat it up with a meat tenderizer.
Take butter, make it into little spheres, or at least cubes. Roll the butter in a mixture of spices that you mix up. Wrap the butterballs in the chicken sheets that you beat up and pin it in place with skewers or toothpicks.
roll the skewered assemblies in beaten egg or a batter you make up. Then roll in breadcrumbs or panko flakes. Then fry until golden brown and slightly crispy. Place on paper towel to drain.
I arguably go to more trouble making desserts or making pizza from scratch, but pizza I can break into tasks widely separated in time. And I usually don’t make it from scratch, lazy guy that I am. Not with pizza dough or sauce so easy to buy.
Made regularly, probably three dishes: carne adovada, beef stew and Sunday gravy (a tomato-based meat sauce that requires hours of braising meats and the making of meatballs). Actually, all of the above require hours of braising. The adovada is probably the most fussy in terms of ingredient preparation.
Going by “the dish that has longest preparation times”, I guess it would be spaghetti with meatballs. First you put the tomato sauce on the fire, with the usual condiments but without oil. By the time it starts bubbling, you’re already frying the meatballs and adding them to the tomato. You can prepare them in advance and then make the spaghetti right before lunch, or cook the spaghetti while the meatballs boil.
Way back when we’d follow the “traditional” Barcelona Christmas menus, so Christmas’ Eve dinner would involve chickpea soup with lots of meat, and Boxing Day lunch would involve cannelloni made with the leftover meat from the soup and perhaps some of the meaty leftovers from Christmas’ lunch. Nowadays we only have one Christmas meal at Mom’s and it involves a roast of meat over potatoes (meat may be rabbit or a bird), from a local oven that’s been in business for over 700 years - we figure they have optimized the recipes by now
Wonton soup from scratch. I make the wrappers, the broth, everything. It takes two whole days, one day to make the broth, wrappers, and fillings, and a second day to make the wontons. I usually make a HUGE batch, like 4-500, and then freeze them, which is also a lengthy process, but it’s worth it.
This was the first complex dish I thought of, too. Except I’m more likely to make pastitsio, which is layers of browned cheese, béchamel, and thick spicy ground beef/sauce on a base of cooked pasta.
Considering that Greek cuisine is best-known for lots of fresh green vegetables, olive oil, simple grilled fishes and meats, “let the true flavor shine through,” blah blah, they certainly have provided the world with several great casseroles.
Gigante beans baked with onion and tomato and fresh oregano is another prize winner.
I wish my gf would try this. When I serve dinner, the kitchen is relatively clean. I cook* mise en place*, and I clean up constantly while I’m cooking.
But when my gf cooks, she is a whirlwind of mess in the kitchen. There will be cucumber skin stuck to the wall, tomato paste on the ceiling, dishes, knives, spoons, etc all over.
After we enjoy dinner, when she cooks it’s my responsibility to clean up. If I cooked it’s her responsibility to . . . relax.
On third thought, my most complicated regular dish would be gumbo. You really got to get into the zone before you start one.
Even for a simple chicken-sausage gumbo, you need to:
Cut up the chicken and sear it in oil (hell, fry it really)
Slice the sausage and brown it in the leftover oil and chicken grease
Chop up all the onions, celery, peppers, garlic, okra
Add flour to the leftover oil and chicken/sausage grease, stir and stir and stir that roux
Add the Holy Trinity and brown it
Add the garlic and okra along with thyme, bay, and other seasoning and sauté until mooshy
Add chopped tomatoes and cook down
Add your homemade stock and scrape up all the fond
Debone and deskin the chicken and add it along with the sausage
Simmer for hours
Put it in the fridge overnight because it’s better the next day.
You can wait till the next day to reheat, taste for seasoning, make your rice and a green salad.
I should have gone with Scottish Smoked Salmon. This starts with picking bones from the salmon loin, then 2 days of dry cure turning every 12 hours, then 1-2 days of wet cure, then refreshing in clean water, settling for at least 12 hours, then repeated applications of glaze with a fan blowing in the salmon to dry the glaze, then hours of cold smoking that requires constant monitoring to make sure it doesn’t get too hot. Even simpler forms of cured salmon have a lot of steps that have to be timed right to get good results.
