Speaking of masochism, LOL, what is the fussiest, most tortured recipe you're ever attempted? >>

J

joe

Well-known member
Here's one:

PAPRIKA CHICKEN CREPE "PURSES"

from the Gundel Restaurant in Budapest, featured in Bon Appetit, 12/97.

(I made these once for as a starter for a New Year's Eve party. It's not that they we so difficult, but when we served them everyone just stared at them silently, afraid to cut into them. )

CREPES:

1 cup plus 2 Tbs. whole milk

3/4 cup flour

2 large eggs

1/4 tsp. salt

1 Tbs. melted butter, plus more for the pan.

Whisk together milk, flour, eggs and salt. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour. Stir in butter. Make 8 large crepes (8-1/2 inches) in a crepe pan or non-stick skillet.

PAPRIKA CHICKEN

1 Tbs. olive oil

1 small onion, minced

2 lbs, (6) chicken thighs, skinned

3 plum tomatoes, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 Tbs. Hungarian sweet paprika

1/4 cup water

3 Tbs. creme fraiche

2 tsp. flour

8 long chives

Chopped chives and/or parsley

Cook onions, covered, in oil in skillet over low heat. Add chicken, green peppers and tomatoes; cover and cook 10 minutes, turning chicken occasionally. Stir in paprika and water. Cook over very low heat, covered, until chicken is cooked through, turning occasionally, about 20 minutes more.

Transfer chicken to a bowl with tongs. Simmer sauce, uncovered, until slightly thickened, about 15 minutes. Whisk in creme fraiche and flour. Cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Puree sauce in a blender.

Remove chicken from bones and chop coarsley. Mix with 1/4 cup of sauce. (Crepes, chicken and sauce can be made 1 day ahead.)

Preheat oven to 300*F. Butter a large baking sheet.

Mound 1/4 cup of chicken in the center of each of 8 crepes. Pull edges up to center and tie with a chive to make a purse shape. Place on baking sheet and heat through in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes. Serve 2 to a plate with a pool of sauce. Garnish with a pinch of chopped herbs.

(This was very tasty, and would make a nice main course rolled up the conventional way.)

 
Chicken Doro Wat - making the (m)

berbere paste with what seems a hundred spices & the spiced butter & injera bread. Very time consuming and lots of measuring tiny quantitites.

 
I believe I'll have the non sequitur with that comment, thank you.

Can it be a menu? Beef Wellington, Potatoes Diane, artichokes, flaming plum pudding and coeur la creme. Tortured only because it was for a guy who turned out to be a jerk.

For the viewing public, I will qualify "jerk" as a boyfriend who went home to visit his family in Brazil and came back with a new wife. Surprise! I insisted on seeing the marriage certificate to ensure the wedding was recent because el jerko would have been called a WHOLE LOT WORSE name if he had already been married and lied about it while dating me.

Lessons Learned? Determine Jeck Potential FIRST before expending the effort in the kitchen.

 
So many answers...

Most of my masochistic culinary frenzy's involve researching a new cuisine and then diving in with both feet to pull off a near royal banquet. I did an Imperial Russian Dinner in 1995 that had me making my own Kvass (after I baked the Russian Black Bread of course), infusing 5 vodkas, preparing a dozen small dishes for the Zakuska table, precious pavolova's with three sauces for dessert, all of the sides for the dinner (Hello Mr. Russian Potato Casserole!), and the main feature of Hussar Beef (which is a large marinated and roasted beef that is carved into very thin slices, stuffed with a mushroom-sourcream filling, reassembled, wrapped in a rye pastry crust, baked, sauced, etc. It took me a week to make everything for this dinner for 8 people.

Another one is doing the full traditional Vienesse Tafelspitz dinner and making all of the accompaniements, sauces, appetizers (austrian appetizers are especial drains of time since each little slice of bread has an arrangement of carved vegetables, cheese, herbs, eggs, etc. sealed under multiple layers of aspic--homemade of course--each one is a precious little still life), and desserts. This one takes about 4 days to pull off.

Also, Rick Bayless's grilled axis venison dish is an over the top affair with all marinade and sauces building on sauces with many exotic ingredients. It takes at least a full day to put together.

And can't forget: Zimtsterne (Austrian Christmas cookie)

But what fun it is.

 
You have my deepest sympathies - I made an entire Greek meal for someone

I made an entire Greek meal for someone, getting blisters from peeling enough of something (I do not remember now what that darn thing was, I've blocked it from my memory) - two days later, I found out someone else was cooking for him, too.

:-X

 
I have had these also at Gundel! I happen to have hungarian pancakes in the fridge

my FIL made on Saturday! This is on the menu for this evening! I have been getting tired of the traditional jelly or walnut filling. Thanks for posting!

Regards,
Barb

 
Oh brother. Don't get me started.....this is your fault, Joe!

How could I pick just ONE? Long ago I specialized in tortured food.

One menu started with a very complicated mousse of scallops with lamb serloin and snow peas on a tomato and basil sauce. Lovely, delicate creamy tomato sauce on the plate, tiny unmolded mousse of scallops in the center, blanched young pea pods crossed in "x" pattern 4 times, 4 small rare lamb serloin rounds between the peas, a tiny bit of hollandaise over the top of the scallop mousse and a finish of chopped truffle.

Next came homemade fettucini- in an Alfredo sauce and the pork roast I posted a couple days ago- along with glazed carrots. There was a light watercress salad too.

For dessert, individual white chocolate souffles with bittersweet chocolate sauce served in homemade tuille baskets.

and that was just one menu!

I remember another dinner I did for 30- the appetizer was one of the most tortured things I ever did- mostly because I had to do 30 of them. The recipe is "Mosaic of Salmon and Sole with a Nettle and Sorrel Sauce". I cut both salmon and sole into thin strips, all equal size- skinny and about 5 inches long. Then I wrapped the sole strips in blanched spinach leaves and wove the sole and salmon strips together like a pie crust lattice- it turned out to be a square. The fish was steamed and set on a lovely cream sauce made from homemade stock, nettles and sorrel leaves, cream, white wine, butter, you know- it was finished with salmon roe and chopped chives. I was finished with a big glass of wine- LOL.

How about the outdoor wedding buffet for 120 with no cooking, heating or refrigeration available to me? Herb cheese-stuffed shrimp in a green sauce, individual spanikopita twists, homemade puff pastry sausage puffs and parmesan puffs, spinach and ricotta stuffed chicken breasts, sayidia tahini in a fish sculpture with a cascading "waterfall" of homemade lavosh, tortellini in lemon cream sauce, a huge platter of Greek-marinated roasted vegetables with feta and kalmata olives, smoked salmon mousse piped on cucumber rounds, rainbow-layered vegetable pate, roasted red potatoes with sour cream and caviar, fruits macerated in triple sec and chopped mint.....then there were the desserts and the champagne fountain.

Or maybe the pizza party where I just couldn't help myself- made Pizza Vedura (shrimp, greens, sundried tomatoes), Pissaladiere de menage (sauteed onions, anchovies, olives, gruyere and herbs), "regular" veggie and pepperoni and a full-on Torta Rustica. Any of you that have made a Torta Rustica can relate to my version which could be called Tortured Rustica. LOL

Oh yeah....then there was the time I made the whole menu from "Babette's Feast"......don't make me go there.

 
Okay, someone needs to get that photo of Cathy and Richard and Photo-Shop crowns on BOTH their heads

C, I've ALWAYS wanted to do the Babette's feast! I love that movie. Only without killing the turtle, of course. Or the little pidgeons.

Well, mostly I want all the wine bottles on the table and the general goodwill of the guests...which I have achieved at times.

 
Well, if you ever DO the menu note that there was a giant faux pas in the movie

....Babette baked the puff pastry shells in the oven until lovely and brown- then put RAW birdies in them- and popped them in the oven. Nope, can't do that. Got to roast the birdies separately then assemble. If done the way it was done in the movie the pastry would be charred. Just fyi....

Yeah, the wines alone would be more than anyone could ever dream of......I made my guests think I used the authentic wines but of course I didn't.

 
One of my favourite revenge stories.......can't remember the source but it's funny.

A husband left a note for his wife one morning to say that he was leaving her for another woman. He mentioned he would be returning later that day for his clothes. To save herself jail time or worse after killing him, the wife packed all her husband's suitcases and took them down to the front stoop. However, before stuffing each shirt, jacket, and whatever into the suitcases she carefully cut off the buttons and put them into a container.

Later that day, Husband returned for his things. As he collected his suitcases Wife sprinkled the buttons down from an upstairs window like confetti and suggested that Husband's new lady friend could sew them back on.

 
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