Ask Lemmy

Lasagne. And I hate Mondays.

Proper paella. I enjoy making it in the sense that it's simpler to cook and is more like a risotto, but to make an actual paella as close to the way the dish should be made takes so much effort, the correct ingredients and equipment I have neither the time nor the money for.

Century egg

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.

Demiglace. Way too much work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mianjin (seitan) or vegan ramen. Both super time consuming and hard but awesome!

Ice cream

Pavlova.

Working in the kitchen requires good coordination and an intuition I will never have in my current setting because it's not the form of intuition I was raised on. The ability to cook to precision without everything spelled out comes off to me as almost psychic, and I don't have that. So I will never be making myself my favorite dish.

The only reason i do any cooking at all is because it's too expensive to buy food.
I hate cooking. It takes so much effort.

Ramen, but it takes so God damn long to make.

mainly foods that have a key ingredient that I would only use for that dish and not very often. an example being something that needs a cup of flour. can't buy a cup of flour, gotta buy the whole goddamn 3 pounds.

Cubanos. I want to really, really bad. But I know I will never go through that.

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.