Hey all - I'm fairly new to cooking, (I'm 26.)

I made risotto for the first time last night for some friends, and it worked. It turned out! As you can tell - I'm so excited! I have a million dishes to wash, but it was so worth it to make for a special event.

Anyone else attempted dishes they thought were impossible, and turned out to be fairly easy?

Congrats on the risotto success!  I love risotto, but have never made it the traditional way- there is a box mix that I like quite a bit, and that's as close as I have come to making it myself!  I just took a cooking class in which the instructor made risotto in a pressure cooker, which I had never heard of before- but it was fantastic, and only took 11 minutes to cook!  I posted about it in the thread called Goal for 2008: Cooking at Home, if you are interested.

I can't say that I have made anything that I anticipated to be difficult lately- my busy schedule requires quick and easy cooking most of the time!  I am going to try out a roasted chicken recipe that out of the current issue of Cooks Illustrated though- the method is completely different than how I usually roast a chicken, so it should be interesting!

Lesley