Diving into the deep end

Ideas for quick, satisfying weeknight dinners are always welcome. When you’ve logged in a hard day at the office, in the field, or in the house, the last thing you want to do is tackle a recipe with a laundry list of ingredients, multiple complicated steps, and the potential for dirtying every saucepan and mixing bowl you have. However, on the weekends – or whichever days you have a respite from the daily drudge – it’s a different story.

On those rare occasions when I have an uninterrupted day, I love diving into a complicated recipe. Lots of steps? No problem. Measuring twenty-seven ingredients into an assortment of bowls? Yes, please! Saveur gets me, because on their site they have a list of a baker’s dozen of their most difficult recipes. People who love complexity will get it in recipes for Duck Pâté en Croûte, Shanghai Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao), and other days-long projects.

While I usually gravitate toward the baking arena with multi-component desserts or fussy French pastries, there are plenty of savory recipes that allow you to while away the hours of an afternoon as well. You can also combine the two discliplines, as the duck pâté recipe above shows. There are several good reasons to take on a complicated dish. It can provide a welcome escape and an outlet for anxiety, the finished dish can impress your friends and family, you will get a sense of accomplishment when you’re done, and you will most certainly hone your cooking skills, which will come in handy on the frantic weeknights. About the only downside (for me at least) is cleaning up the kitchen afterward.

Some of my favorite difficult recipes that I’ve tackled recently include:

• Coffee religieuses (Religieuses au café) from The Art of French Pastry
• Rosebud: rose custard, caramel crisps, saffron pistachio cookies from Elizabeth Falkner’s Demolition Desserts
• Scarlet empress from The Cake Bible
• Pear and fig charlotte from Desserts by Pierre Hermé 
• Croissants from The Art of French Pastry (pictured above)

What do you like to make when you have a leisurely weekend?