Most Difficult to Prepare

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THE most difficult ethnicity to cook?


  • Total voters
    17
  • Poll closed .
Good question Sush. I would say any group, because if you are serving it to that ethnicity, they are going to tell you if it is good, or not.

Some Thai can be tricky, and Indian can too, depending on the region.
 
Except for German / Polish / Russian, The other groups are so in demand that finding the ingredients and instruction is very available. Someone from the UK was recently talking about knuckles so some of their food would be very hard to make as well.

Where would you most likely eat Dragonflies & Wasp Cones?
 
hey Sush, i think Tattrat is dead on: if you're serving it to someone of that nationality, it's gonna be hard to wing it.

for my $0.02, though, i think i have to go with chinese. the american stuff we call "chinese food" over here - think of what you find on those buffets - isn't all that tricky. but **actual** chinese food, wow, whole 'nuther ballgame.
 
Actually...what Sushi asked was what's difficult to prepare rather than serve. Some cuisines are quite labor intensive and are difficult in that manner. Others call for ingredients that are not available to many of us. These are some of the components that make a cuisine difficult.

Now...for a critique of a difficult dish, yes, serve it to the ethnic group that it is supposedly responsible for it. Now, that's a hard nut to crack. It's a little like serving your best homemade dish to a 5-star chef.
 
Assuming I had a recipe and the ingredients available, I like to think I would be able to handle any of these, but for me, probably japanese would be the most challenging.
 
quite true Katie. for authentic chinese food, i did mean just what you said: both hard-to-find ingredients for a lot of it, and lots of crazy prep time. i have no desire to attempt the shrimp steamed dumplings, in the paper-thin translucent wrappers...
 
I noticed that Thai, Indian and French are all missing from your list.

Indian and Thai are probably the most intricate because "curry" is not one mixture. Each recipe requires its own masala, and that is not something you can purchase at Whole foods in a can! you have to toast the seeds and grind your own concoction. Each and every time.

The results can be ethereal.
 
I voted for Japanese, but that's mainly because I've never made any. I have a large Asian market, and a Mexican market, just a few miles away from here. Both are on the same intersection

German/Polish/Russion doesn't really intimidate me, as a lot of the ingredients (except the pig's blood for Blood Sausage) are readily available as well.

I agree with Chef June. Thai/Indian and French are listed. You want difficult? Try a French Chau-Froid, Chicken Gallantine, or a Pate en Croute. This involves some skill, and it VERY labor intensive. I haven't attempted any of these since my college days.
 
i would have to say chinese - my mom tried to replicated it one time for us because we got her a chinese cookbook for some holiday...lets just say things didnt turn out that wonderfully (and i think that was the only time that book was used)
 
Im voting Chinese. I never get it right. BTW, anyone want to donate a computer chair? :rolleyes: Last night while typing this thread I leaned back and the back cracked off. :( The bolts snapped. *sigh* What are the chances?
 
-DEADLY SUSHI- said:
Im voting Chinese. I never get it right. BTW, anyone want to donate a computer chair? :rolleyes: Last night while typing this thread I leaned back and the back cracked off. :( The bolts snapped. *sigh* What are the chances?

Humm ... perhaps it's time you checked into our Health, Nutrition and Special Diets Forum, DS? :LOL:

Your question is hard to answer because it's a big case of "it depends on what you're talking about". Are you talking about everyday home cooking or restaurant cooking? Yes, a Peking Duck can be a bit of a chore to prepare, but so is a Turduckin ... and have you ever looked at the instructions for a French "Pressed Duck"? The German food my grandmother made very tasty and simple ... but her strudle dough was a pain and a half (x3 or more) to make the way she made it - totally by hand.

Every cuisine has its simple recipes - it's not so simple recipes - and some that are down right hard to make.
 
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I worked in a Japanese restraunt in the kitchen, and most of it was simplicity itself, the rest... LOL, Naaah.

the precision was Insane! made you frustrated just watching it :)

I was only 14 years old though, maybe now I could watch it and try myself, but not then!
 
ANY cuisine that one is not familiar with is difficult to cook because you're not familiar with the entire flavor profiles of that particular cuisine. For myself, any type of Asian cuisine, Mediterranean cuisine, French cuisine, and most Latin cuisines (excluding the Carribbean) are fairly easy for me to make because that's what I like to eat and what I'm familiar with cooking. I struggle with other types of European cuisine (English, German, Polish, etc.) and some regional American cuisine because that's not what I grew up eating and I'm not familiar with the entire flavor spectrum of those particular cuisines. Because of that, I don't have the palate for all of the flavors that are used which not only makes it difficult to know what the dish is supposed to taste like, but also in fixing the flavors of a dish and ad-libbing dishes in those types of cuisines.

For anyone to say that a particular cuisine is not difficult to prepare, they need to be able to prepare a wide variety of regional dishes from that cuisine, not just a handful of dishes or dishes that they know in their particular region. For instance, for someone to say that Chinese food for them is easy to cook, they need to know how to cook Mandarin, Cantonese, Sichuan, etc. For someone to say that Italian cuisine is easy to cook, they need to know how to cook dishes from all over Italy: Roman dishes, Sicilian dishes, Tuscan dishes, etc.
 

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