For me it's cooking East Asian food at home.
Food columnists are always suggesting stir-fries and noodle soups as easy midweek options but I can never get them to turn out right. That's even when using proper authentic ingredients like imported bonito flakes, mirin, shrimp paste, sesame oil etc. It always turns out too sweet or too salty, too insipid or too intense. Often a combination of dissatisfactions.
I suspect it's not so much about the ingredients but more about the cooking process. To get a really good stir-fry you need a heat higher than a household cooker provides, and for noodle soup you need to be boiling bones for a day or two to get an excellent broth.
After yet another noodle soup tonight which didn't quite hit the mark, I've decided to give up on East Asian cooking and save it for eating out. It feels liberating to throw in the towel. Though I have a bunch of East Asian ingredients and condiments in my cupboards which will probably languish at the back until we move from this flat.