Once-is-Enough Kitchen Feats

[Peter the eater]

While I tournéed a 10lb sack of potatoes for the first and last time, I began to think of other culinary accomplishments I don’t ever wish to reproduce . . .

[Lilija]

Catering a a party for 75, while I was 8.5 months pregnant, in August, pops into my head, immediately.

Shelling about 5 dozen chestnuts for soup was another nice, but never again, sort of deal.

More will come to me, I'm sure.

[Peter the eater]

Catering a a party for 75, while I was 8.5 months pregnant, in August, pops into my head, immediately.

Oh my, pops is the word. The heat, the mayhem, the physical demands -- I trust it all worked out.

I want to buy one of those big mammal heads from my butcher. That's got Once-is-Enough written all over it.

[Marlene]

Keller's Boeuf Bourguignon. While I was in the middle of trying to sell my house.

Catering our annual Christmas party for 100 myself, while still trying to be a corporate wife and mingle.

[Pierogi]

Trying to replicate my Polish grandmother's (who died when I was 6 months old) Paczki for my mother, who remembered them fondly, as only one can do through the mist of nostalgia and lost loved ones.

Paczki are a yeasted, filled pastry, that's then deep-fried. They're filled with either a poppy-seed paste, or a fruit paste, like apricot (think of the fillings in other Eastern European pastries like ruglach...). After deep frying, they're dusted with powedered sugar while hot & steamy & greasy. They are clearly a delicacy one learns at the knee of ones ancestors, like making tortillas or ravioli by hand.

I was a snot-nosed young 20-something, had ZERO experience with yeast dough, and less with deep frying. I wasn't sure when they'd risen, I wasn't sure how long to knead the dough (way before KitchenAid entered my life......), I couldn't keep the dough from sticking to the counter, my hands, the rolling pin, I couldn't GET the dough to stick to ITSELF to seal, they were, to put the best spin on them, a mess. Oh, and I was working from a recipe that had been translated, poorly, from Polish, and had instructions like "add a scant amount of flour until the dough is proper".....

My blessed mother, taking one bite, clueless to the torture I'd gone through to get to this point, blithely state "they don't taste like my Mom's.......".

[Shalmanese]

Cassoulet

Lasagna from scratch

Prepping fresh fava beans

Pho

[Peter the eater]

Cassoulet

Cassoulet is a good example of a dish that makes sense if you live in rural France with all those ingredients at hand. In my neck of the woods the components are expensive and/or hard to find: duck confit, dry French wine, Toulouse sausages, goose fat, etc.

[Shaya]

Keller's Boeuf Bourguignon. While I was in the middle of trying to sell my house.

Marlene, I second Keller's boeuf bourgignon. All those extra steps, straining, making the sauce clean...after all that my husband declared he much preferred my usual version (ala Julia Child). This version loses a lot of its character through the process.

[poppalarge]

Catering a a party for 75, while I was 8.5 months pregnant, in August, pops into my head, immediately.

Shelling about 5 dozen chestnuts for soup was another nice, but never again, sort of deal.

More will come to me, I'm sure.

blanching, shelling and peeling chestnuts is definitely up there for me as well

[LaurieB]

Making tortellini from scratch. Nope, won't do it again, especially since we have a superb company here in Cleveland that sells superior fresh pasta.

[Darienne]

A few years ago an allergic-type friend asked me to make her a chocolate dessert called Torta Divina (also in honor of her last name which is Devine). It called for an entire pound of chocolate. I guess she and the others liked it. As I recall it was a certain amount of work...however the main thing is that it called for one whole pound of Belgian dark chocolate.

Served it again for a small dinner party at home a few weeks later and the invited husband remarked how good it tasted...just like a Tim Horton's brownie.

Never again!! For me chocolate works best when paired with orange or raspberry or something other than more chocolate.

[therippa]

Making tortellini from scratch. Nope, won't do it again, especially since we have a superb company here in Cleveland that sells superior fresh pasta.

I'm with you on that. I rolled them out using a wooden dowel, and the palm of my hand was sore for almost a week.

[ChickenStu]

Ive been trying to cook a lot simpler at home. Eliminating extra steps that just take up more time, make more mess, and become frustrating in a home kitchen(especially in a small nyc kitchen).

The appeal of dishes like boeuf bourgignon and coq au vin for me is their rusticity and peasant roots. Ive done them both ways and definitely prefer a less fussy approach. Although i still like proper tourneed pommes rissolees with my boeuf bourgignon.

A couple months ago i did brioche by hand...my brioche pan will be used as the water bath for my sharpening stones until i have a mixer and a better oven.

Now that I have a circulator, I will never poach eggs the old fashioned way again.

I did a research paper on brownies in college, after about 10 recipes and nearly 15 boxed mixes... betty crocker triple chunk brownies ftw.

[Mr Pie]

During my student days, me and a housemate decided that it would be a good idea one Summer evening to have a BBQ and invite a 'few' friends around. After a dozen or so acceptances, it dawned on us that we didn't actually have a BBQ. I ended up cooking for about 25 people on an upturned dustbin lid with the oven grill laid accross it. I would like to say that it was a success, but can't remember much past about 9pm.

[maggiethecat]

I'm never gonna mess with traditional Thanksgiving dinner again. Never again:

1)When you're serving twenty people broth with (yes) homemade tortellini within, the first bowl's cold before the last hits the table.

2)Two turkeys, two different cooking methods -- what was I thinking?

Suckling pigs are skinny and make the kids cry.

[Special K]

During my student days, me and a housemate decided that it would be a good idea one Summer evening to have a BBQ and invite a 'few' friends around. . . I would like to say that it was a success, but can't remember much past about 9pm.

That means it was a success!

[Peter the eater]

I could see me making tripe exactly once.

I almost bought the raw ingredients last summer after watching Julia do it in on The French Chef. The butcher came out with a huge clear bag full of brown watery cow rumen and said "it needs to be washed . . . five bucks?".

[Doodad]

I would have to say homemade tomato sauce. Peeling and deseeding pounds of tomatoes then cooking down for what frankly was less tasty than canned.

That and ravioli. Boy did we botch that.

[abadoozy]

I would have to say homemade tomato sauce. Peeling and deseeding pounds of tomatoes then cooking down for what frankly was less tasty than canned.

I didn't think I had anything to add to this thread until you reminded me. I once had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes. This was in Colorado, and we often got a freeze in early September. Sure enough, snow was predicted one night.

I picked all the cherry tomatoes, and seeing as there was no way we could eat them all fresh before they went bad, I decided to make salsa with them and freeze it. But I prefer salsa made from peeled & seeded tomatoes. That's not too bad when you're talking normal sized tomatoes; for some reason, I didn't think about just how much work it would be to peel & seed close to ten pounds of cherry tomatoes. I think it took me most of a day, and my hands ached at the end.

This was when my husband and I were first dating. He tells me now, over ten years later, that he began to doubt my sanity at that point in time.

At least the salsa turned out tasty! (but not any more tasty than had I made it with standard tomatoes)

[MelissaH]

Catering a a party for 75, while I was 8.5 months pregnant, in August, pops into my head, immediately.

Shelling about 5 dozen chestnuts for soup was another nice, but never again, sort of deal.

More will come to me, I'm sure.

blanching, shelling and peeling chestnuts is definitely up there for me as well

I'd include water chestnuts in this category. I did 'em once, and after all that pain, was struck by how similar they were to jicama in both taste and texture. Guess what I use now.

MelissaH

[Peter the eater]

I would have to say homemade tomato sauce. Peeling and deseeding pounds of tomatoes then cooking down for what frankly was less tasty than canned.

I didn't think I had anything to add to this thread until you reminded me. I once had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes.

We had a huge quantity of Tiny Tim tomatoes last year. The solution was to purée the bejesus out of them, simmer off the water, then freeze the concentrate. We're still eating them.

[Lilija]

Oh oh oh, add me to the homemade tomato sauce train. One year, we had a huge bumper crop of roma tomatoes. Glee! I thought. Twenty six pounds of peeling, chopping, and cooking...cooking....cooking....cooking.... to get about a quart of sauce. It was good. Not mindblowing. Just good.

Last year, we got hit by the tomato blight, and all our crops turned black. This year? I'm not even going there, we're sticking to herbs.

[LindaK]

Turducken. I've only watched someone else do it, and that was enough.

[blue_dolphin]

This is hardly a feat but... 10 dozen bite-sized quiches.

I'm now aware that pre-formed pastry is available but I'm still not doing it again!

[andiesenji]

I made a Bombe Royale (30 cup size) only once. It turned out nicely but once was more than enough. It took me all of one day and well into the night to prepare it. I had difficulty sleeping because I was so worried that it would collapse when released from the mold.

The following day I had to prepare a dinner for twelve and was already exhausted so the presentation and success of the bombe was rather an anticlimax. I was barely able to taste it.