Community Picks -- Noodle Soups

The pleasure was all mine, AJ! I'm so glad to have your delicious soup in my repertoire now.

lapadia, what recipe did you test? Would you be so kind as to put your review in the comments to that recipe (and perhaps you could put it in the comments here, too!), so we can read and benefit from it? I'm curious, and very interested! ;o)

Dear AJ,
Here is my review for Chef Junes Pasta e Fagiole e Scarola which has also been posted to the recipe:

This is my favorite soup and I could happily eat ChefJune’s recipe the rest of my life. It is perfect as written, an overnight affair if you are soaking the beans; a quick sauté of onion and garlic before adding the stock, beans, Italian herbs and prosciutto, simmer for an hour, all the while filling your kitchen with a wonderful, fragrant, Italian aroma! During this time, the escarole is prepared and the pasta, farfalle – commonly known as little bowties is cooked and to be added in intervals before serving and topped with cheesy goodness = Parmigiano or Pecorino. Whether you call it fagiole or fazool, which is what my family called it, it’s all the same, pasta with beans soup, a warm-your-soul kind of peasant Italian dish!

Thanks so much for your attention to this...

Dear lapadia! Your review is wonderful, and the soup sounds delicious, but the editors always ask us to write not more than 100 words. This might be the reason.

Thanks for your kind words, Kukla :)

I think that editors, by virtue of the definition, can take a review as favorable as this one and parr it down (in other words- edit it) to meet the word count and grant a contributor who has almost a full *pie* the benefit of her expertise.

"Pare"

Pare – to peel or cut, trim, decrease bit by bit [from Old French parer to adorn, from Latin par?re to make ready] Couldn’t resist that ;)

lapadia, thank you for sharing your review. Although we wish we could, we can't make every recipe with a positive review a community pick. It is always a challenge to select a small number of community picks from the wealth of recipes submitted for each contest, and we do our best to take all reviews into account. We always encourage testers to share their reviews in the comments section!

And we do our best to respond to user emails, but there is a huge volume answered by a very small staff -- we do appreciate your patience if it takes us a few days to get back to you.

Thanks for the response, MarianBull. Why can't we make every recipe with positive reviews a community pick? Isn't that in the spirit of this being a community-driven website? I think if we knew the policies and procedures behind what makes a community pick, we'd better understand why it may or may not be chosen.

I think originally all the recommended recipes WERE made Community Picks. Somewhere along the way, the staff changed their minds, but didn't tell us.

What Marian was trying to say is that we invite up to three testers in the community, then we also test to find the Finalists -- so a single positive review doesn't guarantee a CP. When the editors weigh multiple reviews, there are often different results and opinions to compare -- it's amazing how different a recipe can turn out for different cooks, in different kitchens. We do our best to make judgement calls awarding CPs to recipes that work well for the most people, but just because a CP doesn't get awarded doesn't mean it's not a great recipe -- which is why we always encourage reviews to be posted in the comments too.

Thanks so much to everybody for your time taken with this CP subject. Attention editors please look for my email. Happy Weekend!

Chefjune: That was when there was a separate set of recipes picked for the community to test, and another one that Food52 had picked to test themselves.