BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Personal Chef What's your most ambitious dish?

What's the most ambitious dish or meal you've ever made?

Definitely a luau for 75+. But I didn't do it by myself. My entire family chipped in! My dad cooked a 300 lb. piglet in an underground imu. We made lomi salmon, haupia, chicken long rice, teriyaki chicken, etc. in huge batches.

I need to be more mindful about the time factor when throwing a party. I have to remember that I'm the hostess first and chef second! My guests want to visit with me and I tend to stay in the kitchen.

I serve foods I like without thinking about the time they take to cook. Most of the stuff I like requires last minute cooking. For example, I served deep-fried ice cream balls served in flour tortilla baskets. You can't prefry the ice cream balls!

You also can't prefry won tons and other such items. So I really need to plan better party menus that allow me to enjoy the party.

Because I was raised in a home where my mom always threw dinner parties, hosting large events doesn't faze me. Thanksgiving, etc. for 20 is nothing. But I need to remember to STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN! The thing is, it's my favorite place!

The actual dish isn't the hard part. It's usually the VOLUME and TIME CONSTRAINTS that is the challenge! Like Dinner Impossible!

I love Dinner Impossible!!!

Watched it last night.

I have a similar challenge when I cook for the masses, the only difference is that they don't want me coming out of the kitchen. LOL!!!

They'll tell me it great to see me, now get back in the kitchen!!! She's a foodie too so no worries there.

But I love being in the kitchen too. I tell my wife all the time... "All we need is a great kitchen and the room to entertain big and I'm fine."

I like making dinners that call for a lot of chopped stuff - I love to chop up veggies and meats and have a lot of ingredients. So, usually my most ambitious meal is something like stew or paella. With stews I like to serve my homemade bread with it. My favorite bread is challah because it is so pretty on the table and it has such a wonderful texture and taste.

Oh! and for dessert, I like to serve cour de a la creme with blackberry sauce. I have a very easy recipe for that but everyone thinks I have spent hours making it, so I get a lot of compliments.

Jason, I do not think I ever welcomed you to this site. Welcome. Good to have you here.

Get outta here Phyllis!!! I love stews!!!

I'm not so much for soups and broths, but stews... Oh yeah!

This is my idea of a great pre-dinner conversation!!!

I am going to JUMP into my dinner!!!

I have this cookbook called "Mmmmmiami" and there is this one recipe in there for "Florida Keys Conch Chowder"

It has over 20 ingredients, including (of course conch meat), calabaza, yuca and boniato (which when I first made this I had never heard of)

My husband absolutely loves this - but is is a nightmare to make, and the shopping for it is not so easy either!

That sounds great Chelle!

I have a stew that has a ridiculous amount of ingredients as well, but it;s well worth the effort, but it is an effort.

Stews - thick, rich and loaded with food - are the foundation of a happy home. Well...homemade breads is right up there, too!

I remember one cooking show I loved to watch (Jacque Pepin) and he said, when you are cooking make sure you have something to chop! And chop loudly so the neighbors think you are really working hard at cooking up something fantastic.

anything out of the ordinary would be considered an ambitious dish....and I say that because I'm always forgetting an ingredient here or there which requires me traveling back and forth to the store. For example, even if it's something simple like seafood fetticine alfredo...I'm always forgetting the simple stuff like the asparagus...or the roma tomatoes (it's not really fettucine alfredo, it's some dish I made to copycat an Olive Garden dish). It got easier when I discovered alfredo sauce in a jar, but it doesn't have the same taste as homemade.

You're right Diane,

It's hard to find something in a jar or can that tastes homemade; but here's what you can do to Dr. something up to give that homemade feel [even when it's come out of a can or jar].

You can caramelize some onions and saute some garlic and add the canned goods to the pan with the garlic or onions in it.

If it's a sweet dish like say for example you;'re going for something that has canned berries or apples, etc., in it, saute some fresh fruit and caramelize it adding the canned ingredients to the mixture once it's developed its flavor. This way it tastes like it is homemade.

That's my 2 cents worth. It's pulled me out of a few jams [no pun intended] when I've been at events that had a bunch of canned goods to work with and I still wanted to create an unprocessed look, feel and flavor to it. It moves it from the homogenized to the more complex satisfying all who partake.

Let me know what you think.