A generation or two ago, cooking was a daily task that was undertaken in the same spirit as other household chores like laundry and tidying up. While cooking was generally reckoned to be more enjoyable than vacuuming, food preparation was a duty that had to be carried out regardless of how much pleasure one got from the experience.
Recipes a generation ago emphasized the ease of preparation of a particular dish — that the dish could be made with a small number of ingredients readily available; that only a few steps were needed to create the dish, and that only one pot, or a pot and a prep bowl, were needed; that the dish didn't take a lot of time to prepare.
Nowadays, cooking is not something carried out daily in most households. Prepared foods, whether brought in from a restaurant or a frozen meal for the microwave from a grocery store, dominate our diets. Since we don't need to cook, cooking has become primarily a hobby undertaken on weekends and for special occasions.
Consequently, a recipe's complexity is viewed by some hobby chefs as a virtue. Hunting down exotic ingredients, mastering culinary techniques, even using an inordinate number of pots and pans are steps that provide hobby chefs a sense of accomplishment.
As someone who is still a chore cook, I stop reading recipes once I determine they require too much work for what they produce. But my recipe choices are very much in the minority nowadays. My hobby-chef friends view the less-complex fare that emerges from my kitchen on a daily basis as insufficiently inspiring for the rarer occasions when they make the effort to cook.