Cover with Water, Simmer, Order Pizza

Is it too late to use leftover turkey in a soup – Sick of Sandwiches

Generally, cooked food lasts for about 7 days. The timeline isn’t firm, there are variables – Was the bird cooked to a proper temp? Was the cooked meat brought to storage temperature properly? Was the food stored in a clean container? Was the turkey returned to the fridge quickly after it was pulled out?

Considering the pace of Thanksgiving, the answer to most of those questions is no, which is why the USDA cautiously recommends a max of 4 days of storage for the holiday bird. I am not as circumspect, because soup is heated and kept at a safe temp for hours, there is an added degree of safety in using the turkey for the next 2 days. Sandwiches, on top of being pretty unappetizing by the Monday after Thanksgiving, might be pushing the envelope of food safety a little – don’t double down with the mayonnaise that was left out overnight.

Only days ago, the scent of turkey was a promise of good things to come, as wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting. Today anything remotely suggestive of poultry is a culinary Groundhog’s Day, Waiting for Turkot for the more literary-minded: The same old, same old with a slight variation - Instead of bowl of turkey rice/veg/pho to sustain you the next few days; I would suggest taking the remaining bones, scraps of dark meat and make a strong stock and freeze it for future use.

This stock takes about 20 or so minutes to get started, which is just the right pocket of time from hanging up the phone to the pizza arriving.

1 Carcass and remaining wings, thighs and drumsticks from a 12+ pound bird
Water to cover bones - about 3 to 5 quarts
2 Small onions, peel removed, cut in halves
2 carrots, peeled cut in to 2-inch pieces
2 stalks celery, left whole
Parsley (6-10 stems), ½ t. dried thyme and 3 bay leaves

Break up turkey bones to fit in stockpot. Cover bones with water and bring to a simmer.

Wash and peel veg while the stock warms up. When a simmer (155-160°f) is reached, reduce heat to maintain simmer and add veg and herbs. You’ll want to add salt and pepper but don’t the turkey was possibly brined and definitely roasted with plenty of both. Seasonings can be adjusted at the end.

After the veg are added, simmer all uncovered for 2 hours. Strain liquid into a second stockpot or bowl and discard bones, veg and herbs. Cold weather residents can place a lid on the stockpot and store outside or unheated garage overnight. Those and temperate climes, should let the stock cool for an hour before refrigerating.

After the stock has cooled, skim fat from surface. Ladle stock into 1 qt bags/containers and freeze. Use as needed over the winter months, your split peas, risottos, spätzle, minestrones will be so totally happy you took the time to make stock.

From the Land of Tofurkey

NY Times, whose Thanksgiving coverage has been great, has the best article on tracking online recipe searches. The article is here - It is fun and funny. (Hat-tip: Anne)

And since it is the now officially the Holiday Season, it's time for the Peanuts to bust out the Christmas funk. No offense to Vince Guaraldi but I like the Outkast. BTW - I dance exactly like the dude in the foreground of Pigpen & bass

Muffin, Darling, Honey

In English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, claims the word crumpet evolved from a regional expression for a piece of skirt; for a time a crumpet, colloquially anyway, was a term of endearment a fella might use to describe his sweetie. Eventually, ‘muffin’ displaced crumpet as way to express love and fondness in a very British way, without actually acknowledging it.

Not quite as wholesomely, the Saucyhome has come to love a good strumpet on the Thanksgiving table. Here, the strumpet isn’t the traditionally defined woman of misunderstood, loose or easy virtue - no need for a holiday for their company, always welcome – instead the neologism refers to a food that is half crumpet/half stuffing. Originally, strumpets were designed as a way to free up oven space on a busy day and kill the stuffing and dinner roll bird with one culinary stone. Strumpets ended up quickly turned into a Thanksgiving mainstay.

The problatunity with strumpets is getting the batter consistent. The batter has to be loose enough to go into the round forms they are cooked in; thick enough to hold up to the fillings while still being light enough to develop the telltale air pockets of a traditional crumpet. In order to solve this problem – The Saucykitchen has resorted to the bane of every improvisational cook – research and testing to perfect this recipe.

With all the strumpet cooking this week, it occurred to us as good as they are at Thanksgiving, they are the perfect vehicle for leftovers – Turkey, cranberries? Mashed potatoes and a dollop of gravy? Wild rice and roasted root veggies? Cooked in the middle of a fresh, yeasty griddle cake it is even better. If you aren’t ready to forgo the traditional stuffing and/or dinner rolls – break out a little strumpet batter on Friday or Saturday.

8-10 Strumpets

1 C. Stock
½ C. Cream (warm together to about 100 degrees (warm to the touch, microwave is fine)

2 Tablespoons yeast
1 T. sugar
½ t. salt
2 eggs
2 C All-purpose Flour
2 T. chopped Sage & Parsley

2 T butter
2 T oil

Warm the liquid. Combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl – Slowly whisk in warmed liquid. The mixture should be the consistency of a pancake batter. Cover with a clean towel and leave in a warm place (top of fridge works well) until batter doubles in size – about 50 minutes.

Gather strumpet fillings - The short time on the griddle means fillings will not cook any further - so make sure anything you add to the batter is the right degree of doneness – wild rice, sausage, apples, cranberries, onions, celery, bacon, oysters or any traditional stuffing ingredient or a nouvelle addition like cream cheese and lox can be used.

Heat griddle or frying pan to a medium heat, melt 1 tablespoon butter + 1 tablespoon oil and place rings on griddle. Fill and this takes some work – fingers, the back of an oiled spoon, fill the bottom of ring with batter and add filling and top with batter. Cook for 60-90 seconds, remove form, flip and cook for an additional 90 seconds. Keep in a warm place – repeat until batter is gone.

Starting to Look a lot Like Thanksgiving

Understandably, Thanksgiving has been on my mind. Last night I went to a friends house for a pre-Thanksgiving/a practice Thanksgiving/a Sunday night Thanksgiving – not really sure what to call it but it had all the Traditional Holiday foods, well if deep frying a turkey is traditional – good,, but I am not sure how traditional it is. Enjoying the day before the day.

At lunch yesterday, I read about the real, true story of Thanksgiving from Andrew F. Smith’s new book, Eating History. A book comprised of 30 events that changed American’s eating habits. Two things – First, I am pretty tired of history as an epiphany – where one thing happens that forever changes everything else – okay maybe it isn’t history, maybe it is more of contemporary culture and maybe it isn’t even culture’s fault but the people who write about the one touchstone moment that forever alters humankind’s progression. The complexities of society aren’t as easy as a writer’s trope.

Second, you don’t have to go and get all Howard Zinn about [stuff]. Yeah, pilgrims and Indians sharing a feast together rather than smallpox, it’s a polite fiction. Even if Thanksgiving’s original sin is that the event didn’t actually happen, what does that have to do with me? I am supposed to ignore the holiday just because it is a myth? What abut other myths? On the days my life feels like one laborious, backbreaking, futile effort after another - am I not allowed to reference Sisyphus? Or just because many people use the day to fulfill obligations – family, football, cranberry relish, store bought pie topped with whip cream from a can, does that mean I shouldn’t enjoy the day either?

Instead, doesn’t the fluid notion of truth enable me to make Thanksgiving a reflection of the values that are important to me? Good food, prepared well, shared with people you love and enjoy. Well that is how I like to think of Thanksgiving. Not smallpox and a bump in domestic violence reports.

Now I am off to work on tomorrow’s post, strumpets – not what you think and try to figure out if pumpkin tiramisu is all a wishful fantasy or if I can make it something people want to eat. For the time being the NY Times, who have ripped open the debate of turkey v. sidedishes, has been all over kitchen support, offering sensible advice. The Saucy Thanksgivingpedia, not quite as well funded or staffed as the Times – I can go to the archives and offer up a buttery crust, an easy to make tender cream cheese piecrust, and offer not one but two alternatives for pie haters – tart and custard. Along with Friday’s cranberry post, I have counter-arguments you can respectfully present to the person who inevitably states wild rice isn’t really rice. Finally, whether you go Brussels Sprouts or brussels sprouts – it really isn’t thanksgiving without the wee cabbages of love.

More T-day stuff tomorrow afternoon.

Cranberial Index

Cranberries! I hate the [darn] things. Now in a cruel twist of fate, I have been assigned to bring the cranberry dish for Thanksgiving. What else is there besides relish? - Crantankerous

If providence gives you cranberries, make cranberryayde – No really, it was a drink served in the 18th Century, probably similar to our own cranberry juice. Plus drinking cranberries may be the most palatable way to consume the berry. A Cosmopolitan might be the best cranberry dish you can bring, even with all the inherent liabilities that come with drinking hard alcohol in close quarters with family members you don’t see often (possibly for good reason).

There are 150 different varieties of cranberry in existence but 4 – Early Black, Howes, Searles and McFarlin rule the market. Although somewhere on the web, someone is hawking heirloom cranberries, don’t believe the hype, according to experts the flavor differences between the varieties are indistinguishable. Cranberries have been one of the few crops to survive the breeders desire to make a sweeter, more palatable fruit. Only limes and lemon top cranberries acidity in the fruit world – which is great if you have a touch of the scurvy. Most of the crop is processed – juice and canned berries being the most common destination for the berries.

My all-time favorite Thanksgiving dish for the little red fruit was cranberry sorbet. Served after the heavy Turkey-stuffing-taters-bacon sprouts-gravy main course, the sorbet was sweet and cold, a palate cleanser for the salty, rich foods that had just passed. And while I might have liked it, that approval was far from universal - Thanksgiving isn’t the best day for trying new foods – experience has painfully reinforced that people don’t like straying too far from the familiar dishes, even if they don’t like them and won’t eat them. Well that and you really can’t serve sorbet buffet style.

There is Susan Stamberg's famous (famous for Public Radio anyway) Cranberry-Horseradish Relish. It is the most unique relish available legally. Just as horseradish goes well with roasted meats, the flavors from this preparation lend themselves to roast turkey extremely well (and turkey sandwiches even better). On the downside, the recipe produces a shade of pink that is visually halting. You could add whole cranberries to the stuffing, which considering your assignment doesn’t sound like that is an option. Or there is always wild rice salad/pilaf with leeks, toasted pecans and cranberries. Baking shallots and cranberries in an open roasting pan with cranberry juice would work. If you can’t arrange the oven time - Caramelized pearl onions with cranberries could be done on the stovetop. If you can go sweet, there is cranberry cheesecake, cranberries baked into shortbread & topped with orange curd or pears poached in sweetened cranberry juice – a dessert that can please a vegan when nothing else on the Thanksgiving table will.

On a different day combining cranberry relish and mustard to the outside of the ham before an hours long baking would be delicious. The cranberry brain trust has spent time promoting their crop as something other than a once a year treat (ideas here). Just what you want - the chance to eat something you don’t like all year. For the big day you might be stuck delivering what your host asked for – the recipe on the back of the package works well, the addition of brandy, particularly an orange brandy like Cointreau or Grand Mariner helps round out the flavors. Best of all you don’t have to worry about what to do with the leftovers.

Try a Little Tendercrust

Saucyman – My last piecrust was a sodden in the dish, leaden on the tongue disaster. It came from the frozen food section of the store and it was still about 10 times better than the previous one I attempted to make. With Thanksgiving around the corner do have any advice for a more perfect pie? – Crustworthy

Butter! The word alone invokes the promise of rich, handmade goodness. It melts in the mouth, quite literally at 85-90°f, dissolving on the tongue. Vegetable shortening and margarine - often substituted or combined with butter in pie recipes, doesn’t begin to melt until the 110°f range, leaves the mouth coated with a thin layer of emulsified soybean fat instead of having your taste buds warmed by what Seamus Heaney calls ‘coagulated sunshine’*.

Historically, I have favored an all-butter crust. Butter! is troublesome to work with: Completely chilled, butter is brittle - Warming butter to a point where it can be easily rolled out affects the finished texture . As of late, I have fallen in love with cream cheese crusts. About half the cost of butter, cream cheese accomplishes the same objectives as shortening – making dough easier to roll out the crust without adding the plastic/processed tasting-doesn’t-melt-in-the-mouth shortening to the recipe. In addition to the cost, flavor and ease of use, cream cheese has another benefit for the occasional baker – less water. Quick refresher, when combined with flour, water makes gluten – great in chewy bread, not so cool in pastry – According to baking professionals – an extra tablespoon of water in pie crust can make the crust too tough, cream cheese helps control the amount of water needed to roll out the dough.

So if cream cheese is all that, why not use it all pie recipes? While butter produces a flaky crust, the following recipe produces a tender crust. Flaky and tender are used somewhat synonymously – they aren’t the same thing – one isn’t better or worse. Biscuits are tender; puff pastry is flaky: biscuits aren’t better than puff pastry, they are only different.

A piecrust baked with a custardy pumpkin, rich pecan filling or filled with baked apples, it doesn’t matter whether your crust is tender or flaky only that it is good. This cream cheese recipe produces a good crust and an easy crust for the occasional baker.

Tender Pie Crust (One 9 inch pie)

1 cup + 2 Tablespoons All-purpose Flour
1 stick; 4 oz cold butter (cut into a dozen + pieces)
3 oz cold cream cheese (cut into 6-8 pieces)
pinch of salt

1 teaspoon cider vinegar ‡
2 tablespoons vodka §

Add dry ingredients, butter and cream cheese into a food processor and pulse together. (Or work together in a bowl). The end result should be a crumb like texture – the fat coated by flour.

Transfer contents to a Ziploc-like plastic bag. Add liquids. Squeeze the ingredients together in plastic bag until they form a rudimentary ball. Let dough rest/chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes & up to 3 days.

Roll out on a lightly floured surface just like any other piecrust. Line 9-inch pie tin with crust and place in freeze for 10 minutes. Fill and bake as per usual.

‡ Vinegar helps tenderize the crust. Acids also inhibit browning. An 1/8 of a teaspoon of baking powder will neutralize the acid. A glass/pyrex pie dish will encourage even browning. I’d choose the proper equipment over a chemical fix.

§ Vodka being roughly 50% alcohol; dissolves during cooking. Ice water can be substituted.

*Despite what you have heard about Nobel Awards vis-à-vis Obama’s Peace Prize, they really don’t hand those things out, coagulated sunshine, Go Seamus.

Part III: Crusty

The final piece of the tart is the pastry. Different types of pastry dough can be used: pate sucree, shortbread, pate sable. The terms are unique and specific but somehow they all get muddled together – there is enough overlap in each of these recipes that one baker’s sucree is another pastry chef’s sable. Fair enough, these pastries are all similar; all contain a high fat content in the form of butter and sometimes nuts, yet slight variations in ingredients and how they are mixed produce different results in sweetness and texture.

Pie pastry can be difficult: The butter has to be at just the right temperature – cold enough so it doesn’t melt; warm enough that it can be rolled out. Tart dough isn’t so needy. It relies on the fat to tenderize the flour, creating a cookie-like texture. Making the dough is like making cookies – an activity far more familiar to the casual baker than piecrust.

This is the easiest crust in the world; it can be mixed and laid in a tart pan in 20 minutes. Another 45 minutes to freeze and 30 minutes to bake times the whole operation a little under 2 hours from start to finish. But it isn’t like you need to watch the pastry in the freezer or oven, so it is pretty much hands off after the initial burst of energy. Because the pastry crust is frozen before it is baked, those pesky pie weights/dried beans do not have to be used.

This dough can be made, shaped into the pan and frozen up to 2 months in advance. I think it is easier to make the tart dough/pastry/crust as the last component of this dessert but forward thinking individuals might keep an unbaked tart pastry in the freezer for giggles.

There will be pictures by Monday.

Almond Crust

1 ¼ cups All-purpose or pastry flour
½ powdered sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 stick + 1 Tablespoon butter, cut into small pieces
¼ cup ground almonds
1 egg yolk

Combine flour, sugar, salt, butter and almonds with a mixer. If using a Kitchen Aid, mix together by pulsing the power on and off about 10 times. If using a food processor – pulse together 10 times.

Add the egg yolk and mix for about 10 seconds. The dough will still be sticky and granular, but that is okay, turn the dough out on to a work surface finish mixing together with your hands. Mix until all the loose pockets of flour have been worked into the dough.

Butter a 9 in tart pan *and begin working the dough into the pan. This dough won’t take kindly to a rolling pin; it will crumble, so it needs to be Patted in and even it out with your fingers. Double thickness up the side and there still should be enough left over to reserve 2 tablespoons of dough to patch any cracks or fissures. Place in freezer for at least 45 minutes, longer is better; overnight(s) are great.

Preheat oven to 375°, remove tart shell from freezer, butter a piece of aluminum foil and place the foil buttered side down on the tart dough. Bake for 25 minutes – remove the foil. If the dough has puffed, push it down with a spoon, if there are noticeable cracks – patch with extra dough. Close oven door, turn heat off and leave in the oven for 15 minutes or until the crust browns to desired amount.

Let cool, fill with pastry cream, top with poached pears and you have a dessert.


*I like the metal ones with the removable bottoms. If using ceramic, serve from pan, crust will dissolve if you try to remove it.

Sandwich Porn

I don't know how else to describe the photos from yesterday's NY Times.

I like the one with French Fries on a sandwich. I know it isn't jambalaya (which has more than once been shoved in bread at the Saucyhouse but I am not sure it is a jambalaya sandwich), but the po-boy is New Orleans.

Enjoy your porn

Pastry Creamed

Last Saucyman, we poached pears. Step 2 of the Pear Tart is Pastry Cream. While the butter rich crust, which can be frozen either before or after baking, could just as easily be the 2nd component of this dessert, the pastry cream needs to be chilled before using. So unless you want to get extra dishes out and cool the Pastry Cream down via an ice bath or ice cream maker, adding both time, extra labor and dirty dishes to your endeavor, the Pastry Cream should be done in advance.

Pastry Cream belongs to a family of sweetened custard-based sauces that my sister in common law refers to universally as ‘bob’ – Crème Anglaise (English Cream with a Latinized spelling, go figure), Lemon Curd, Zabaglione and Sabayon are all part of this phylum. Each slightly different from the other – Zabaglione, tiramisu’s base is made with Marsala, while sabayon gets wine, sparkling or otherwise. Curds use fruit juice instead of dairy, while Pastry Cream is much like Crème Anglaise, except for it uses a binding agent to help produce a thicker sauce.

Cornstarch is used here although other recipes can and do occasionally do call for arrowroot, agar-agar or if you are old school – gelatin. Besides producing a thicker sauce, the cornstarch absorbs moisture from the fruit topping and makes the sauce heat stable, meaning you can make the Pastry Cream on the stovetop (as opposed to the diffused heat of a double boiler). If a little cornstarch helps produce a winning dessert, a little too much binding agent produces a seemingly vulcanized sauce – be careful with the measurements.

Pastry Cream

2 Cups Whole Milk*
6 egg yolks
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
½ c sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 T butter – cut into 6 pieces.
*Optional 2 T Pear Brandy. Reduce Milk by 1 Tablespoon if using brandy. Why not 2? The brandy is about ½ alcohol, which will evaporate.

Bring milk to a gentle bubble. (Microwaving is perfectly acceptable, but use a pyrex/glass measuring cup - avoid plastic, which can absorb odors, which in turn, really announce themselves when heated).

Locate a rubber spatula, a whisk and a heavy bottomed stainless steel pan. In the pan whisk together egg yolks, cornstarch and sugar. When ingredients have formed a grainy, yellow paste, slowly whisk in a ½ c of the still warm milk. Place pan over a medium heat and continue to whisk in the remaining milk.

When all the milk is incorporated slowly turn up the heat – the temperature should be a gentle boil. Continue whisking and occasionally run the spatula around the edge of the pan. After 1 ½ to 2 minutes remove pan from heat. Whisk in vanilla and pear brandy and walk away for 5 minutes.

Add butter by whisking in one piece at a time. Do not add additional butter until the first piece has been absorbed - The goal is to incorporate the butter to into the sauce not melt into it: This is done by whisking the butter into the Pastry Cream after it has cooled to a lower temperature. When the last of the butter has been whisked in, transfer sauce to a stainless steel bowl and place plastic wrap or parchment paper over the Pastry Cream (otherwise a skin/crust will form, which is not cool). This will keep 3 days in the fridge.

1,2,3 Step Dessert

Baking isn’t difficult. Like a musical instrument, getting good, it only takes time and practice to become a successful practitioner of the sweet arts. Books, visual mediums like TeeVee can help instruct and cut down own practice. The hard part is time, which is pretty easy to waste; making time is a completely different matter. The pear tart that we will be discussing this week can be done in bits and pieces. 20 minutes here and there stretched out over 7 days will get you to the same place as clearing the calendar to have a few hours to bake a Thanksgiving dessert.

There are three components to a pear tart. Poached pears, pastry cream and tart pastry – The best place to start is with the poached pears. For all the promise/threat of the better living that can be achieved through chemicals; it ends up that salt and sugar are still 2 of the best preservatives available. While a home cook doesn’t have Sodium bisulfite or Neohesperidin dihydrochalcone sitting on the shelf, they do have access to table salt and sugar.

Sugar in particular is a near miracle in the kitchen. Sugar is hygroscopic, it draws moisture from the environment – it will draw water from the air. This keeps your cookies moist for days. Or in a solution of 45-55% sugar, the cells inside meat, fruit or veg collapse from lack of water – giving microbes little room to establish themselves and grow.

2 Quarts Water
2 Cups Sugar
2 cinnamon sticks (1 heaping Tablespoon of ground)
½ teaspoon salt
1 lemon cut in half
Optional – 1 T vanilla extract or ½ a vanilla bean split in half.

Combine ingredients in a 4 Qt pan and bring to 165-180 degrees.

Peel 4 to 6 pears. For wine-poached pears, the pears would be cored, left whole and the stem left in tact. Here, the pears can be cut into ½ inch slices or cut into halves*. The slices make a nice presentation. The halves designate portions. Your call…

Once the pears are peeled and sliced to a proper consistency, they can be placed in the poaching liquid and cooked until they can not only be poked with a tip or a paring knife but the knife comes out easily. This will take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending on the softness of the pear and the exact temp of the poaching liquid. Sorry I can’t be more specific

Place pears in a clean container. Let poaching liquid come to room temp, strain and pour over pears. If properly stored (fridge temp, clean container), this can be done up two weeks in advance. Don’t believe me – fine this can be done a week in advance.

*The halves aren’t literally split down the middle. In this instance, a half is cut from the top to the bottom, about a half-inch off the core – the fruit still retains its pyriform figure but saves time on coring and trying to find uniformly sized pears.

Tarting it up

Last week the question of pear pie came up. While in theory pear pie can be done, I think pears have a happier home in tarts. Pies and tarts are similar but the subtle differences produce different results. For openers both pastries contain the usual suspects - Flour, sugar, butter (fat), salt, water and sometime egg. Both pastries are rich in fat but it is how the butter is incorporated into the dough that makes a difference. With pies, the butter is ‘cut’ into the flour, small pieces of fat are kept in tact and coated with flour – when the butter melts in the hot oven, it carries the flour on its back creating 100s of little layers AKA, flaky goodness.

For tart dough, the butter is creamed together with the flour and sugar. The creaming method is probably more familiar as the cookie dough method: Everything is blended together making a smooth, homogenous dough when making/baking cookies.

Tart dough can take all sorts of different forms but a popular and versatile tart pastry is Pate Sucree or sugar dough. An apt name, the pastry contains way more sugar than pie dough and way is a scientific measure. Sugar is import here because it is hygroscopic - collecting water from its environment. Drawing moisture away from the flour, the presence of sugar inhibits the growth of gluten. This produces tender pie dough.

Flaky/Tender are thought of as synonyms but they aren’t really the same thing – Flaky is visible strata, airy, toothsome with a good chew. Tender is crumbly under the pressure of a fork, melt in the mouth quality – A good tart crust is tender.

Just as seemingly small differences in the combination of ingredients can create dramatically different results, the same is true for the choice of pan. Pies are baked in round, usually 9-inch wide dishes. These pie plates/tins/pans are made of glass, ceramic or metal. Pie pans are usually 11/2 inches deep (Deep-dish pie pans run 2-3 inches deep).

Most recipes for tarts call for an 11-inch wide pan. Tart pans are largely (&affordably) made of metal, although ceramic is a popular medium and the bendy, silicone forms are gaining traction in the market. Tart pans aren’t restricted to the circle. Square and rectangle are popular shaped tart pans. You’ll never see a deep-dish tart pan – the sides are ½, ¾ or 1 inch deed and scalloped. The scallop shape helps strengthen the sides of the pastry.

The ratio of sugar in the tart pastry helps draw sugar away from the flour helping prevent soggy crusts. The larger surface area found in tart pans helps evaporate excess moisture. For a fruit with a high moisture content like a pear, how cool is that? It even gets better, tart dough – pate sucree is very forgiving - Not good with a rolling pin? You can piece and patch together the dough in the pan.

With Thanksgiving coming up, apple, pecan, pumpkin and sweet potato will be well represented in the pies. A pear tart, elegant, seasonal, different yet familiar – How cool would you be if you made one? (Pretty cool). Next week’s Saucyman will walk you through with 3 recipes to build your Thanksgiving tart: Explaining poached pears, filling and pate sucree as the week rolls on.

A Lady walks into a Restaurant

We’ll return to the issue of tarts later in the week. I know you are dying to know what exactly is the difference between pate sucree and shortbread, but in my never ending quest to be relevant and timely…

Yesterday, the NY Times ran the first half of 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do. In typical service industry fashion it is phrased in the negative – and it is a long list of no-nos to memorize. Granted, 10 things every waiter should do is not as fun or as ranty. After 20 some years of working retail and restaurants, there are some gems in there.

Special praise to #39 – never call a woman ‘lady’. I would add ma’am to that rule. A 17th century contraction of madam is servile and antiquated; neither respectful nor deferential to age, it is an anachronism. As an experienced veteran of the retail wars and separately as a bit of a flirt and a charmer, I would caution, never, ever call any woman aged vaguely between 30-50 ‘Ma’am’. Call someone in her 40s ‘Miss’ and you make their day, call someone who is 31 Ma’am and you occasionally get tears. I’ve seen it happen. And even if you don’t see tears, it doesn’t really make women glow with happiness.

I am little less hostile about #38, never call a man ‘dude’. I find a well-placed ‘dude’ really takes the edge off of what you are saying, especially when you are delivering bad news. #41, never say ‘no problem’ is so obvious it doesn’t need to be said. Saying ‘No problem’ actually means it is a problem, and really, you’re at work, customers don’t care about your problems; work is a result driven arena. Don’t talk about obstacles - Can you deliver or not. Like all rules, there are exceptions and tacking a dude on the end of ‘no problem’ does take some of the edge off of telling a customer their request is in fact problematic.

I hate personable waiters. I don’t need to know names, their opinion of the menu (unsolicited statements about food and drink makes me feel like they are attempting to unload merchandise) and while there is a time and a place for charm in this world, it isn’t 5 minutes before the check lands on the table. My friends object when I talk like this. They will either imply or accuse me of desiring service workers to be autonomic Borg.

And this is wrong. My current job, my day job, the one I am constantly encouraged not quit, I sell books. I don’t walk around rolling my eyes every time someone looks at Tom Robbins or Ayn Rand. If asked, I will give my opinion on a book, but if someone wants a recommendation, I inquire what kinds of books they like rather than talk about myself and what I like to read – does that make me illiterate, uninteresting or any less unread?

Being professional, especially in non-professional settings like retail and restaurants, isn’t the death of personality. Do you want your physician to be Patch Adams or a detached practitioner who can diagnose and treat maladies? Do you want your mechanic to constantly talk about what pieces of crap Fords are (in his very learned opinion) or do you want him to fix your Escort? Why is it any different when you go out to dinner? Being confident/competent, knowledgeable and attentive is not the same as being soullessly walking through life.

I know no one dreams of growing up and waiting tables or working in a bookstore. But is that really any excuse for skating on some combination of attitude, intelligence, charm and/or an abundance of personality; learn and practice your craft.