I have made some fussy dishes, including sourdough puff pastry. I’m pretty motivated to make food homemade.
Baklava is the one I’d like to make but never will, even if I bought the dough - layering phyllo sheets one by one would kill me.
Spring rolls. They are so much work. If you wanna do them right you have to start the night before. So many ingredients, the sauce. But they’re soooo good.
I have the Ladurée macaron cookbook and I look at it frequently, and then go buy a lesser version of the cookie and pretend I’m happy.
Lasagne. And I hate Mondays.
If it helps, we’ve found cooking the noodles was unnecessary. It holds together better if you don’t.
I just soak the sheets in water whilst making the other elements then construct otherwise I’ve found sometimes you get crunchy lasagne.
That’s never happened to us. Could be our usual sauce is too wet.
Maybe I need more wetness ;p
Skillet lasagna is the answer you seek! Maybe.
And if you’re really feeling lazy, cook up some ravioli, put it in the skillet with the meat sauce, cover it with mozzarella, and throw it in the oven for a few minutes. Voila! Psuedo-lasagna
Beef Wellington
I recently tried my hand at a porc tenderloin Wellington, as a lower budget try out to see if I could make it.
It went surprisingly well and was really more delicious than I thought. So I think I’m ready to make a proper beef Wellington coming Xmas.
Mianjin (seitan) or vegan ramen. Both super time consuming and hard but awesome!
I too am afraid to attempt seitan. I got all the ingredients and now they sit doing nothing.
I made it three times and 2/3 were awesome
Here’s the video I followed: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2YN6krVtk&t=44s&pp=ygUTUG90IHRoaWNrZW5zIHNlaXRhbg%3D%3D
I live in a different city and often find myself wishing for my mother’s Portuguese Salted Cod Casserole. It was out typical sunday family dinner when I still lived in the same city as them. Not a cultural tradition, just because it was my favourite dish.
But the nature of it ensures that I’ll never ever ever have the patience to do it myself, considering that step one is soaking the dried salted cod in cold water that you repeatedly replace for up to 48 hours in order to get the salt out.
Thanks for mentioning this. Just found a recipe!
This is the one I found closest to my mothers. She herself doesn’t ever write down HER particular measurements.
So it’s… unsalted?
Khao soi
My mom makes these cottege cheese and bread crumbs dumplings that she boils until they float and then you cut them in half and drizzle melted butter and brown sugar on them.
I could never pronounce or spell the name of the dish but she claims it’s a traditional German dessert.
I tried explain it to chat gpt and it had no clue what the hell I was talking about. It kept telling me about Turkish dishes that have the right ingredients but look nothing like the baseball sized dumplings she would make.
It could easily be a family recipe. It looks like riffs on this theme are pretty common. Maybe it was a Hungarian recipe? Sounds like a great mystery!
She responded immediately. It’s called “Quark Klöße” according to her.
Looks like the specific ingredients and prep are a family thing, but that’s definitely what it’s based on.
Now I can rest easy. It was gonna drive me crazy if I couldn’t remember the name of the food. Haha
This seems pretty close to what you described: https://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/166041072019596/Suesse-Quarkkloesse.html
It sounds good / I’m thinking about giving them a go. If you find a better recipe let me know.
I think my mom’s recipe is all in her head. I do know that she tends to add some lemon peel zest into the dumpling mix which gives it just the faintest citrus smell/taste prior to the butter and brown sugar being added at the end.
Bed of luck. Let me know how you like em.
Will do, thanks! I totally get having the tweaks in your head or written into the family recipe book with a pen. Our better homes cookbook has tons of notes/tweaks written into it now.
I should probably ask my mom to write down her recipes for posterity sake at some point. I think my sister knows some of them .
I think they are called Topfenknödel in German, i remember my family making them as well, served with jam, they are delicious!
That Hungarian dish looks visually the closest but it was definitely made with wet cottage cheese.
I am absolutely going to butcher the name/spelling but it was called “cvlockclusa” in my house. I’ll ask my mom how it’s spelt.
All food is like that to me. I only cook because otherwise I’d die of starvation. I eat to live - food has always just been fuel for me. I don’t want to put any more effort into cooking than what is absolutely necessary. If money was not an issue, then personal chef would be the first person I’d hire. Hell, if it was possible I’d hire someone to eat it for me too.
I feel this so hard. If I could just have a pill that would properly supply my body with all the nutrients and sustenance it needs I would 100% do it and then just eat one or two actual meals a week for the flavours.
https://www.kitchentreaty.com/40-cloves-of-garlic-soup/
I made it once for Thanksgiving years ago. Everyone loved it. It was a pain. Especially since I didn’t have an immersion blender.
Looks pretty easy, assuming you have the blender. I’m not even sure how you’d make this without a blender of some sort. How did you do it?
Cake. Orange cake.
I don’t really lack for motivation, I’ll take on some pretty wild culinary adventures, but occasionally I run into things that I just can’t logistically make happen.
For example, nowhere in my house has the right sort of temperature/humidity to cure my own salami and such (I’ve checked,) and I just don’t have the space to squeeze in another fridge with humidity controls and such to make a curing chamber.
I’ve made my own bacon, various kinds of sausages (including smoking my own kielbasa, andouille, and hot dogs) I’ve helped butcher chickens, I’ve made beef Wellington, sushi, I’ve baked bread and cakes in a Dutch oven in a fire pit, I’ve made ice cream, homemade pierogies.
protip : you can cook anything. maybe you don’t cook it well the first time. but if you’re not completely freeballin it, and are following an established well reviewed recipe, once you cook it poorly or not to your taste, you can always make notes, and adjust the next time. be fearless in your experiments, there’s a lot of freedom (and cost savings) in learning how to cook what you like to eat, the way you like to eat it, at home.
