Recently I made Julia Childs “Beef Bourguignon” in the oven. While not specifically a difficult recipe it is time consuming. I used brisket, cut off the fat, cut it into 2" squares and seared each side. I set the beef aside and covered cooked the onions, carrots etc. added in the beef and rest of the ingredients including 3 cups of wine. I cooked it in the oven for 2 hours. With about 15 minutes left I sauteed the mushroom that I cleaned and quartered until done. When the two hours was up I drained the beef through a colander saving the liquid. I skimmed the fat off the liquid and heated it until it was about the texture of a thin gravy. We added everything back into the stock pot and heated it and served it over garlic mashed potatoes. I spent 3.5 - 4 hrs. preparing everything. It was worth it. I’d do it again but not often.
[So my simple little ice cream project turned into an all-day affair with a sink full of used pots and utensils. But it was totally awesome and worth the effort!
[/quote]
I can usually gage how good the meals going to be by how much of disaster the kitchen is in when the meal is ready.
I made latkes once by hand. Never again!! Took forever!
Bread. I just don’t have the bread making gene, I think.
I once spent alot of time/money/effort on a very nice beef tenderloin. It was amazing. Kids hated it.
Several years ago I spent 3 days preparing and brining a turkey. It was good, but the general consensus was my super easy seasoned butter roasted turkey was better.
Just a couple weeks ago I made homemade italian meatballs. They were to die for!! The boy said “eh, I like the frozen grocery store ones better.” He’s off the Favorite Child List now.
@fendrock Oh it totally was! I’m in awe at professional bakers because I’m still not able to get my cake perfectly symmetrical and smooth. Working with buttercream is totally unforgiving for amateurs like me.
DiL and I spent a ton of time making these tiny raspberry and chocolate cake things just for something to do – well in the center full of mousse, decorated with a piping bag…my son walks into the kitchen eats one WHOLE and says that is not bad, but it doesn’t have icing…DiL looks at me and I just shrugged and said “you picked him”. So now our family says “doesn’t have icing” as a random thing.
I once made a day long stew from some unusual cookbook. When you had to cook bananas into it, I started to worry. It was horrible. Really bad. My children reminisce years later about how awful it was.
Made candy corn from scratch! Quite impressive
DH and I make many things that others might consider overly ambitious, but we’ve been cooking together for decades so nothing much phases us anymore. However, we watched in awe when our son decided to make Beef Wellington and Yorkshire pudding for us for Christmas his senior year in high school. He is an avid Gordon Ramsay fan and watches a lot of cooking videos. When he said he wanted to make the Christmas dinner, both DH and I were thinking, “What else do we have in the freezer in case this doesn’t work out?” Beef Wellington is a labor of love that requires ingredients we don’t generally have on hand (like beef), but he did all the shopping, rolled up his sleeves, planted his iPad on the kitchen counter, and went to work. DH and I fetched and cleaned and watched for hours. Kiddo followed the video meticulously, roasting chestnuts for the duxelles, wrapping the beef perfectly, and scoring the pastry exactly as shown. We had a fabulous picture-perfect Christmas dinner that year. He has repeated this feat annually ever since, and we don’t mind cleaning up after him one bit.
For anyone interested, here is the recipe (there is also a video):
Since then, he also offered to make and serve sushi for one of our cocktail parties with the same spectacular results and the added benefit of providing unexpected entertainment. Someday, he’s going to make someone (who doesn’t mind the cleanup) a fabulous husband. 
Cooking is a competitive sport at our house, esp between H and expat S.
Expat S does beef bourguignon in a cast iron pot over a campfire. Wrote a college essay about it while it was cooking. He loved Anthony Bourdain and in his travels, checking out food experiences is the highlight of his adventures. He gets the chemistry of food and makes up recipes all the time. He made us a Beef Wellington once for New Year’s Eve. That was a TON of work!
H loves cooking for large groups. We did a big dinner for 165 for a Gilbert and Sullivan singout marathon from our townhouse kitchen. Expat S was four months old.
We also catered older S’s wedding (100 guests). Three entrees, many sides, desserts, etc. It was a wild week. I was sous chef and Master of Logistics.
I used to make challah regularly, but it was always hit or miss. Should try it again and look at the King Arthur site.
My overly ambitious cooking project is generally processing lots and lots and lots of freshly picked fruit!
Yum.Wellington might be our thanksgiving dinner. Ironically, I first had it at a youth hostel in Germany.
D2 perfected her Macarons, once she got a KitchenAid mixer. But that was then.The mixer is now at my house.
I don’t think either D can really cook beyond boxed stuffing or scrambled eggs. The treat is FSIL, who’s got a way with cast iron roast chicken. And basic home roasted chicken is a family thing on my side, a treat. DH learned it from my grandmother, who’d get rave mentions, even years later. Not that special a recipe, it was just always good. And great stuffing. So I told FSIL I’d be happy if he made his version for my birthday.
Some years ago DH and I joined a bridge group that played once a month, and the hosts supplied all food and drinks. The attendance was usually 10-14 folks. I don’t entertain a lot, but wanted to impress the first time we hosted, so I made a Polish feast: stuffed cabbage (golumki), kielbasa and kapusta, pierogi, a green bean side dish, polish rye bread, and apple cakes for dessert. I spent two days planning and cooking, and coordinating pots and pans in my relatively small kitchen was a challenge, but everything came out well, and we had leftovers for days.
Over time, as we got older, everyone tended towards less elaborate dishes, which was fine with us. We still counted on having leftovers.
My family is small, never more than 7 people, and for a while I did Thanksgiving, and eventually got good at all the logistics and timing. As everyone became vegan or vegetarian except me, it got even easier. I’d have a turkey tv dinner, though, just on principle.
My greatest fail? Some sort of rolled veal shoulder. I have no idea what happened. I have blanked it out the memories are so bad.
Each week we are making something new. This week we made venison osso bucco with risotto and a gremalata. Friends of ours who hunt gifted us with the shanks.
Never cooked venison nor risotto. Overeall, it was a success. LIke everyone else we have some successes and some failures. Tonight happened to be a success.
S15 made a homemade pumpkin pie the other day. From scratch - starting with with a real pumpkin! It was good. He’s crazy and really enjoying cooking during covid times
.
Growing up my mom usually made us eat whatever she cooked. But she made duck one time and it was SO bad she had to laugh and throw it away. She couldn’t eat it either. We still laugh about that.
For me, anything with more than 3 ingredients is ambitious. I like to bake, not cook, so experimenting with cooking only works when I’m in the right mood for it.
I decided, on a whim, to make a Portobello Pecan Wellington for Thanksgiving (we’re all vegetarians) since we were not hosting the usual 14-20 people. It was my first time using puff pastry (store bought) and it turned out surprisingly well. I may make it again for Christmas with a few additions/alterations.