Cookbook Club Results & Reminder #5: Lentil soup(s). (Patreon)

Happy spring equinox, Cookbook Club Frienjis!

Erin here with your monthly reminder about our current Cookbook Club recipe: Lentil soup(s)! You can find the recipe and its three variations here and the feedback survey here. As always, you’re welcome to make just one or all three versions of the recipe—we’re appreciative of any feedback you can provide for these in-development dishes!

The Report

47 Frienjis have submitted feedback so far with 9 Frienjis making multiple iterations of the dish. Shoutout to Dave, Carri, Michael M., David, Dave H., Brittany G., Andreas J., Amy D., and Porcini!

Half of you opted to make the Spanish-style lentils, while only a quarter of you went for the coconut curry lentil soup or Turkish lentil soup respectively. Now that we’re five months into the Cookbook Club, plenty of Frienjis are beginning to accumulate ingredients that were once hard to find (one example this time around being Aleppo pepper, which we used in our first recipe together).

Oddly, a common theme throughout this month’s feedback is that habanero peppers were the ingredient playing hardest to get, with multiple Frienjis noting this is outside the norm for their local grocery shops. With missing habaneros, and two of the three recipes calling for some sort of pepper or chili, we saw some interesting substitutions across dishes:

Jerri used dried chiltepin peppers and jalapeño in place of the habanero or serrano, as well as a locally-made hot sauce.

Porcini mixed paprika and gochugaru for the Aleppo chili and used a Scotch bonnet pepper for the habanero.

Andreas J. used Espelette pepper instead of Aleppo.

And Brittany G. used a homemade hot sauce made with pequin peppers from their garden!

A record-setting 10% of Frienjis reported not enjoying their final dish! These results were split evenly between the Turkish lentils and Spanish-style lentils, with both dishes receiving three “worse than expected” votes each. (The coconut curry comes out unscathed!)

When asked to rank the taste components of their dish, these six Frienjis reveal some helpful data:

★★★★★★ — Sweetness

★★★★★☆ — Bitterness

★★★★★☆ — Texture variety

★★★★★☆ — Saltiness

★★★☆☆☆ — Aroma

★★☆☆☆☆ — Savoriness

★★☆☆☆☆ — Acidity

6/6 of these Frienjis believed the sweetness in these dishes was "just right" while only 2/6 believed the savoriness and acidity were. These results align with the larger pool of feedback we got from all 47 Frienjis and will be extremely helpful as Kenji begins to refine these recipes based on your feedback for the final book!

Show us your dish!

Ole's coconut lentil soup with a jalapeño-ginger drizzle (seen above). Ole reports it was as tasty as it looks!

Dave H., Falloni, and CJD's takes on the Turkish version.

And Laura S. and Trent W.'s Spanish-style dishes, both looking delicious!

Thank you, Cookbook Club!

Your effort and consideration does not go unnoticed, and the entire team is grateful for your help month after month bringing these dishes to life! Next month is our six month anniversary as a club and we're excited to make something special out of it.

— The Cookbook Club Team