7 x begin er maar niet aan-gerechten

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: 7 x begin er maar niet aan-gerechten.

Even top chefs and enthusiastic home cooks must acknowledge their superiors in some dishes: impossible, so difficult. What are the seven dishes you better leave to the pros?

Fugu
Pufferfish, a Japanese delicacy, is eaten raw. Every year in Japan, about twenty people have sashimi of fugu as their last meal. Reason: if you touch the liver with a knife point while filleting this fish, it is toxic. Deadly toxic, for clarity. Therefore, Japanese chefs must undergo training that lasts four to six years before they are even allowed to point at a fugu fish. Don’t try this at home. Relief: there are also special fugu fish bred without poison.

Omelet
Simple, an omelet? There is of course a reason why top chefs like the late Anthony Bourdain ask cooks in job interviews to make an omelet for them. All those beautiful diplomas and glowing recommendations can hide what a few beaten eggs and a frying pan reveal: suitable or unsuitable? The perfect French omelet is barely discolored, folded in the pan into a kind of flap, firm on the outside but soft and creamy on the inside, with just the right amount of salt and pepper.

Croquembouche
An impressive tower of cream puffs with caramel and spun sugar. Where does the difficulty lie? It starts with the puffs, as they must turn out perfectly. Then they are filled with crème suisse, a light mixture of whipped cream and pastry cream. As anyone who has ever watched Heel Holland Bakt knows, you can only fill the puffs once they are completely cooled; otherwise, the filling turns into a snotty state that you try to push into those puffs with a piping bag while crying. Then melt sugar, dip the filled puffs in the caramel for a nice shiny appearance and a crispy caramel crust – watch your fingers – and then stack them around a cone, which from a distance looks a bit like an orange traffic cone. Too much melted sugar and the puffs stick to the cone, making them impossible to remove without cursing and collapsing: too little sugar and the puffs won’t stick together, with even more risk of collapse. Make sugar threads from melted sugar that has the perfect temperature so it doesn’t discolor but does pull threads. Do this with a fork or a special whisk, which ensures that the sugar sticks to your eyebrows and the extractor hood, and spin the sugar threads around the puff stack. Carefully remove the cone and serve quickly, as puffs and spun sugar do not like moisture, light, and long waits. In short: mission impossible.

Paella
No Spanish restaurant or tapas bar that doesn’t have it on the menu, yet paella is a tricky dish. The ingredients rice, vegetables, fish, and meat all go in the same pan, but they each need a different time to cook, so chefs must know exactly what to put in the pan when. The rice can stick to the thin bottom of the special paella pan, but must not burn, and the fish, shrimp, and squid must of course never be overcooked. Many are called, but few are chosen to make the perfect paella.

Haleem
Stew from India, popular in the Middle East. Each country has its own variant, what am I saying? Every family probably has its own preference. The base is lentils, grains, rice, and other legumes that must be stirred in a large pot with lamb, chicken, or beef for hours until they are perfectly cooked. A topping of caramelized onion, ginger, chili peppers, or parsley, and then: serve to extremely critical tasters.

Croissant
Easy: paper wrapper from the can, tap against the edge of the counter and roll away. Or is there more to it? Real croissants, made from homemade puff pastry, are an art. Start at the beginning: the dough. A rich puff pastry, with egg and butter, so that means folding, rolling out, resting, and doing that a few times. That creates the layers. And then rising and rolling up. Many croissants in France are straight, but the real croissant must be a crescent moon. And then baking… A good croissant is tender inside, has a nice crispy outside, and is above all… delicious. Once you have mastered the croissant, go next level with the pain au chocolat, made from the same dough, rolled differently, and with a strip of dark chocolate inside.

Beef Wellington
Showpiece of Gordon Ramsay. Difficult? Almost everything can go wrong with this dish. The meat in the Beef Wellington must be cooked to perfection, so beautifully pink-red, not raw and definitely not light pink-gray, because then it is overcooked and tough. The filling around the meat must be flavorful, juicy, and spicy; not too dry, but certainly not too wet. And then the puff pastry. How do you ensure that the bottom of the dough doesn’t become a soggy mess? If the Wellington comes out of the oven nicely, cut beautiful slices with a razor-sharp knife. If your knife is too dull, the Beef Wellington looks like a train wreck. Somewhere halfway through this culinary challenge, you start to long for meatballs from the frying pan, guaranteed.