What's the most complicated meal you've ever prepared?

Cafe Society
81

I used to help mi abuela make pasteles for Christmas. It was a whole family pitch in for a special occasion dish. I have never attempted to make it by myself.

Another vote for Thanksgiving. That’s when I go all out and experiment and do three day dishes. Fancy apple custard pie. individual Cornish hens, both whole and jellied cranberry sauce, home smoked turkey breast-- it’s been a lot of Thanksgivings for me.

The most complicated (and fun) meals I cook with any regularity are my dinner ramen bowls. They can take multiple days but I love making them. They aren’t traditional. I like to look around and see what I can put in them. This is one of my simpler ones that I’ve already put on imgur, so it’s readily available. It’s one of the simpler ones with a two day broth, sous vide poached egg, unrolled cheat chashu and marinated mushrooms. No menma, must have been one of my first bowls.

Now I’m thinking of starting a what-can-you-put-in-a-ramen-bowl thread.

[Album] imgur.com
82

Please do! Yours looks amazing.

83

I love cooking but cannot be bothered with too much faffing about so “quick and simple with the illusion of complexity” is normally my go-to.

The one exception to the rule is a full Christmas dinner. It is always just the four of us but the quantities are normally large because everything left over gets boxed into multiple freezer meals that my wife uses during the following months.

It is a joint effort by me and my wife. There is something very comforting about being dressed up smartly, working together in the kitchen surrounded by smells and being allowed to drink sherry at 11 in the morning.

So what do we make?

-Turkey, sat on a bed of leeks, carrots, onions etc with wine and giblet stock, steamed in foil first then buttered and roasted nice and brown
-Sausage meat, to stuff in the neck end of the turkey. (there is something very satisfying about shoving it in there into the loose skin)
-Gravy, the vegetables and stock combining with the fatty saltiness of the sausage meat, it just needs straining and thickening (the strained veg gets kept and frozen, later it can be combined with a stock cube and water and whizzed up for an epic veg soup)
-Cranberry sauce (easy)
-Apple sauce (from our garden, even easier)
-Mint sauce (easy, but some years the mint is OK in the garden, some years not)
-Bread sauce (basically bread cooked in a béchamel-style sauce)
-Stuffing, sage/onion/breadcrumbs etc. - cooked separately from the turkey, in balls
-Pigs in blankets - (small sausages wrapped in bacon)
-Roast potatoes
-Mashed potatoes
-Roast parsnips
-Steamed Brussel sprouts
-Steamed Cauliflower
-Mashed Carrots and Turnip
-Mushy peas (not traditional, but I’m northern)
-Christmas pudding (a whole episode by itself, served with a white, brandy sauce)
-Christmas cake (made months in advance, fed brandy on a regular basis then covered in marzipan and icing on christmas eve, served with Cotherstone Cheese where possible)

Plus more wine, beer and port than is medically advisable.

Nothing in there is technically challenging, it is far more the timing to make sure all comes together. The secret to that is knowing what is the one thing that cannot stand or be kept warm, then use that as the datum point for everything else.

In our case it is the roast potatoes, any delay in serving those is technically a war crime.

84

We had one of those recently… I mention it because I knew I had seen that image before…

Although that one was pretty short, see also this and this!

Or we could just build the once and done Ramen Omnibus thread. :ramen:

(you didn’t know we had a ramen emoji, did you?)

85

:+1: I never even noticed the emojis!

86

Moussaka.

Not complicated necessarily…or maybe it was. All I know is that if I recall, it took every bit of the afternoon and used about 2 million pots and bowls.

Freaking turned out delicious, though.

87

If it don’t have okra,… It ain’t gumbo.

88

it sounded great until you lost me here …my opinion of rutabaga is a hill I shall die on

Holy F*** how long did that take to make and eat? id admit id love to do something like that before I plotz for good

was that any good? i remember that a few years ago that type of “cooking” was a thing but it never looked like it tasted like anything

if they ever make a reliable way to ship cooked food l would pay you to make this for me lol

that would be the world’s greatest dopefest we could ever have lol

89

3 days to make, 3 leisurely hours to eat.

Oh, no, it tastes amazing. Spherification results in little taste explosions. It’s some PT, but I’ve totally incorporated it into my arsenal now.

90

C’mon, mashed rutabaga (or Swedes, as the Brit side of my family called it for some reason) is freakin’ delicious. It’s a holiday side dish tradition in our family.

Adding a generous amount of butter to the mash does help, though :wink:

91

I’m with you — rutabaga is awesome. I don’t make nearly enough of it, but it’s among my favorite root vegetables. Though kohlrabi for me might just beat it out. (I don’t mash that, though — soup, creamed, or stuffed usually.)

92

Our mashed potatoes are usually a mix of potatoes, rutabagas, and riced cauliflower.

93

Never had kohlrabi, I will have to fix that!

Sounds good. That mix reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to try making-- I saw a recipe for authentic U.P. pasties that involves grating potato and rutabaga, and pan-frying with beef and onion before wrapping in dough shells and baking.

94

The most complicated dishes I’ve made are usually some kind of stuffed pasta. I’ve made tortellini and I’ve made agnolotti. The agnolotti was fabulous, but it involved making a stuffing of roast pork, chicken, spinach and cheese the day before, and then rolling out fresh pasta dough and stuffing several dozen little dumplings. Then boiling them before saucing them with brown butter, fresh sage leaves and parmigiano.

They were eaten with great gusto, and Mr. brown was especially complimentary. Then, about three months later, I was reminiscing:

Me: Remember those yummy agnolotti I made? Those sure were good.

Him: No . . .? When did you do that?

So I’m not going to do those again.

95

Sounds like Mr. brown needs some ‘Husbanding 101’ retraining. That’s a ‘year one of marriage’ rookie mistake. The only answer to “remember when I made that yummy meal that we both enjoyed?” is “yes, I still dream about how delicious that meal was” :rofl:

96

Another enthusiastic vote for rutabaga.

I like them conventional southern style — pressure cook with some fresh pork bones, puree with salt and coarse ground black pepper, then at the supper table drizzle with vingar that’s been infused with skinny hot green and red peppers.

But we also like them fixed other ways, including roasted over coals or in the broiler, or as lanttulaatikka, a Finnish casserole dish we’ve become quite fond of.

97

Another dish I had not heard of that I want to try now!

I found this recipe for lanttulaatikka (or ‘Lanttulaatikko’, whatever the correct spelling is). Does it look about right?

98

Same idea, yeah.

Here’s the recipe we use. Spices are a bit more subtle and overall effect is less sweet, I think:

99

Thanks for the recipe! 2023 is my year to make Christmas dinner; maybe I’ll try this for a side instead of simple mashed ‘Swedes’.

100

Not exactly stuffed pasta, but arancini are an effort and require some practice and experience to get right also. These were originally described to me as ‘orangini’. ‘Arancia’ is Italian for orange, and these are rice balls stuffed with sauce that resemble an orange as the sauce seeps through while they cook. While it can be done with plain arborio rice it usually involves preparing a risotto first, then sauce to stuff them, then different methods of finishing, sometimes with a breading depending on style. Some will cook them more in the sauce, but I prefer to serve them with their orange-like appearance after sauteing, and then just a decorative splash of sauce over them.

I was dead on my feet by the time I had Christmas dinner on the table last year, you’d have to pay me enough to hire someone to do most of the work. But as long as your wallet is open I could pay that person to go cook it at your house too :slight_smile: