Looking for highly extravagant gourmet meals to cook.... like scary hard and really delicious

Here are two ideas, with a couple of variations.

1.  Risotto with lobster and truffles.

Poach a lobster in a fumet made with water, white wine, some clam juice, dill and a few peppercorns.  When the lobster is cooked, strain the fumet onto some saffron stamens, and bring back to a bare simmer.  Taste the broth, if it's too briny dilute it with water.

Break down the lobster.  Cut the tail into medallion.

Make a risotto in the normal way, using the fumet as the broth.  Do not finish with cheese.

Plate the risotto, and garnish generously with lobster claw, and the medallions.  Shave a bunch of fresh truffle on top.  

Alternatively, you can make a simple pumpkin risotto and garnish that with truffles.

2.  Steak

Buy the best Prime ribeye or fillet you can find.  If you prefer a different cut, or something wonderful is on sale, use that.  Remove from the refrigerator and temp, at least forty-five minutes. 

Marinate it in just enough red wine and Worcestershire to coat the surface.  Within a few minutes the marinade will look like syrup -- a good thing.  Drain the marinade, and shake the excess from the steak(s).

Preheat and lubricate your grill. 

Rub the meat with a mix made from kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper, granulated garlic, granulated onion, and a touch of fresh thyme and well chopped fresh rosemary. 

Cook to medium rare over a live oak fire.  If you can't get a wood burning grill, use really good mesquite lump charcoal -- Lazzari is excellent.

If the steaks are thin (not recommended) cook them over high heat.  If they're thick, and you can control the fire cook them over medium.  If you're using a typical grill that doesn't have much control -- sear them on both sides until you have grill marks, then move them off the fire, cover the grill, and let them finish "indirect." 

Plate by leaning the steak on a mound of mashed root vegetables, a mix of two or three of the following:  carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, rutabagas -- but no turnips.

Garnish with maitre d'hotel butter and plenty of sauteed mushrooms, or marchand de vin also with sauteed mushrooms.   Alternatively, you can put your eggs in one basket and use a sauce chasseur. 

Garnish with mashed root vegetables, some mix of carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes and turnips, and -- if you're not doing a chasseur, lots of sauteed mushrooms.   

BDL

Quote:

Originally Posted by boar_d_laze 

marchand de veau

marchand de vin? 

Just out of the army. I assume you're trained to use a firearm. It's the fall and Bear season here in michigan. Sounds "scary difficult" to both hunt and cook.

Originally Posted by French Fries 

marchand de vin? 

Oops.  Yes.  Fixed.  Thanks.

Begs the question, though.  Which sauce do the veal merchants use?

BDL

i'm not sure we have the same idea of what gourmet is, but on a hardness scale, that is totally delicious, i would add:

1) gallantine ot turkey

2) turducken

3) french pastries and some desserts such as 6 layered tortes

joey

you better have really sharp knives and know how to debone!

you know, just cooking a steak or a piece of fish perfectly should suffice.

Don't try and go too difficult.  Difficult -- even when done right -- doesn't necessarily mean good.  More importantly, many "difficult" dishes will fail on techniques which take a lot of practice to master.  And if you have the technique and the experience to see "complicated" in terms of a number of discrete steps -- there's really nothing that diffiicult

What you really want to do on your non-diet days, is learn how to cook well, master and develop a culinary viewpoint which you can build around.  

I suggested "ingredient driven" dishes partnered with some old-school classics  -- all of which can be easily found on the net with a little research.  One of the tricks you'll learn is to find the good recipes and weed out the bad.   

"Ingredient driven cooking" is a culinary viewpoint.  It means sourcing the best quality ingredients you can (great cooking starts with shopping, gardening, etc.), and cooking dishes which put one ingredient in first place, and use others -- along with your technical skills -- to enhance it.  You can marry ingredient driven cooking with other viewpoints, French or Italian for instance; and other viewpoints, such as New American Bistro, New International, California, Contemporary French, etc., include it as part and parcel.  Ingredient driven cooking can be very technical and difficult to do, but it's going to look and taste relatively simple.  Remember:  One thing, enhanced.

Simplicity can be very deceptive.  It takes a lot of practice, craft, and aesthetic sensibility to start with a few whole fish and turn them into a great plate of sashimi. 

Ingredient driven or not, the main thing about really good cooking is to use good stuff and not screw it up.

BDL

If you've got a taste for Indian food, it can be quite involved in terms of as BDL points out "discrete steps" .. making garlic paste, ginger paste, toasting spices, grinding spices, marinating meats, etc. and the flavors are especially impressive to someone who has not had a lot of exposure to them. It can be extremely flavorful yet healthy as many dishes do not incorporate much fat and instead leverage complex spice blends (masalas). Indian cuisine like other regional cuisines varies greatly and there are beef dishes, seafood dishes, lots of vegetable only dishes, etc. so don't get too caught up on just the idea of the stereotypical "tikka masala".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adium 

....Like I said, I know how to Google so I know how to find healthy recipes blah blah blah.... what I really want is those items you find on the menu's to places only the 1% on wall street can afford. The things that take the chefs that work there years to perfect because its anything but easy to make. Something that I can put on the table in front of someone else and they don't believe I cooked it....

Plan A; rather masochistic approach regarding the degree of difficulty, but your goal to overwhelm people with your cooking hocus pocus will be met.

http://www.lomejordelagastronomia.com/  This is a spanish page "Lo mejor de la gastronomia" or "The best of gastronomy". There's a link "grandes platos" with some recipes by the crème de la crème of the worldtop in culinary art. You can switch to english, but don't know if all is translated to english.

Plan B; cold turkey when it comes to extreme dieting! Consists of 2 components. First one is a daily dose of 6-12 delicious raw oysters. Second, absolutely imperative component, is to find a new, dead gorgeous much too young girlfriend (within legal limits!). You need to understand that this will probably be a temporary approach in which you could lose a considerable amount of weight.

Another chance for me to repost one of my favorite threads in the world.

http://www.cheftalk.com/t/37770/my-grandfather-vs-escoffier