Cookbook Club – Gourmet Today

For our July Cookbook Club we used Gourmet Today, a collection of over 1,000 recipes which Ruth Reichl compiled during her time as editor in chief of Gourmet magazine. To see all the dishes we sampled from this massive selection, go to my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish!

I like a good lentil soup, but don’t really know other good ways to use lentils. I love butternut squash, so when I saw this recipe I thought this might be a good starting place for expanding my lentil repertoire.

I tossed butternut squash pieces with shallots, olive oil, curry powder, salt, and pepper, then baked for 15 minutes at 425 degrees F.

I sprinkled chopped walnuts over the squash and baked for 10 more minutes.

While the squash was baking, I cooked lentils in salted water until tender, then drained them.

I tossed together the squash mixture, lentils, lime juice, cilantro, and salt and pepper to taste. While this dish looked appealing, I found the taste didn’t deliver the way I’d hoped. Most of the flavor was in the butternut squash, while the lentils and walnuts just felt like incongruent textures on my tongue. I won’t be making this one again.