I just started reading Ellie Mathews’s memoir The Ungarnished Truth, in which she wins a million dollars in the [Pillsbury Bake-Off](http://www.bakeoff.com/) for her recipe, Salsa Couscous Chicken.

Surely now you are wondering: how can *I* develop a million-dollar recipe? I’ve got you covered:

The Roots and Grubs Million-Dollar Recipe Generator

If you win, all I ask is a taste of the recipe, a mention in your acceptance speech, and ten percent of the million. Now get cooking!

Did you know yesterday was Tart Day? No? That’s because I made it up!

Tart Day started when I made some Milky Way tarts from Maury Rubin’s Book of Tarts. Rubin is the owner of [City Bakery](http://www.thecitybakery.com/) in New York and LA. We visited it while we were in New York and it’s one of the most awesome bakeries ever. His signature item is the probably the mighty pretzel croissant, but I know him for his tarts, which are made in 4-inch flan rings for clean lines and a perfect single-serving size. (City Bakery also serves the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted.)

Here’s the passion fruit-raspberry tart Laurie and I shared: link.

Several years ago, after buying Rubin’s book, we got some flan rings. Every once in a while I get inspired to pull them out of the storage closet and make a tart. A trip to the City Bakery was plenty to get the tart juices flowing. The Milky Way tart consists of a chocolate tart shell with a layer of caramel under a layer of milk chocolate whipped cream. It was as good as it sounds, except the crust was kind of tough.

So I emailed Neil Robertson, pastry chef at [Canlis](http://www.canlis.com/), and asked him for tips on tart crust. I’ve known Neil since he was a graphic designer practicing pastry in his spare time. He quit his job, went off to Chicago and graduated first in his class at the French Pastry School, then spent several years cooking in the best kitchens in Las Vegas (Robuchon, Guy Savoy, Bellagio). Obviously, I turn to Neil whenever I need pastry help.

He suggested being careful not to overmix the dough, and to try the “sanding method,” where you mix the flour and butter first rather than the butter and sugar, to help prevent gluten formation, which makes pastry tough. Then Laurie brought him one of my Milky Way tarts, and came back with a message from Neil: “I need to show Matthew how to use those flan rings.”

OH I SEE. Rather than having Neil killed, which would be bad for both of our careers, I admitted I had a problem. You see, whenever I lined the flan rings, at best I’d end up with ragged, stunted top edges, and at worst, the sides would collapse and I’d have to throw everything out. So I invited Neil over to show me how it’s done.

This should really be a video post, because there’s no substitute for a hands-on lesson with these things, but I’ll try my best to explain the overall procedure, zooming in on the fiddly fitting of the flan rings.

1. Make your dough and refrigerate it. There are lots of dough recipes out there. My favorite is the one from Simon Hopkinson’s Chocolate Tart, as found in Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Art of the Tart.

2. Butter the flan rings. Remove the dough from the fridge, and rather than waiting for it to warm up, beat it senseless with a rolling pin, folding several times, until pliable. This is a lot of fun, and if neighbors appear with torches, tell them they can have a free tart in a few minutes.

3. Roll the dough out on a well-floured surface. Keep moving the dough so it stays floured; if it starts to stick, you’re in big trouble. Turn the dough regularly and roll gently, so you get a nice, even 1/8-inch layer.

4. Cut a circle of dough 2 inches larger than the diameter of the flan ring. (That is, if you’re using 4-inch flan rings, cut a 6-inch diameter circle.) Gently lower the dough into the ring, easing the outer edge of the circle into a vertical position. Press around the inside of the ring with your thumbs parallel to the work surface, not pointing down toward the surface or you’ll tear the dough. Pull the dough toward you so it’s leaning away from the inside of the ring and ease the dough down into the bottom corner. Lift the ring off the work surface and slide the dough downward slightly so it’s fully flush with the bottom of the ring. You want a 90-degree angle, flaring out slightly along the bottom of the ring.

5. At this point, you have two options. If you want a fairly good top edge, trim the dough flush with the top of the ring. If you want a perfect top edge, leave the top overhang (which reminded me of extra string length sticking out of a guitar head) and parbake the tart shell for a few minutes as described below before trimming it off.

6. Refrigerate or freeze the dough for a few minutes.

7. Line each tart shell with aluminum foil and fill the foil cup with beans or pie weights. This prevents the bottom of the crust from bubbling up, but more important, it holds the sides in place so they don’t collapse. This works much better than the system I’d been using, namely prayer.

8. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until colored and good-smelling. If you didn’t trim the dough earlier, do it after about 6 minutes, leaving the excess carnage on the sheet and snacking on it when it’s fully baked.

9. Remove the foil weights and flan rings and transfer the tart shells to cooling racks. Cool to room temperature before filling.

We made two tarts: earl grey ganache in a chocolate shell, and lemon cream in an almond shell.

(Neil brought some of his smaller flan rings, which are very cute and even harder to line.)

The earl grey ganache was my idea, and while it’s never going to win in a fight with plain chocolate ganache, I liked it. The lemon cream was fabulous, and there’s a bunch left for spreading on English muffins, along with a full batch of lemon curd which I made in the morning before Neil informed me that you can’t make lemon curd for tarts in advance, because then there’s no way to get it neatly into the tart shell.

To get really good at using the flan rings, I’m going to have to make every day Tart Day. Any suggestions?

Have you ever read the book Why We Buy by Paco Underhill? Underhill is a retailing consultant: he tells stores how to move more product. This sounds evil, I know, but mostly Underhill talks about clever ways to keep both the customers and the bookkeepers happy. For example: a lot of stores keep their shopping baskets only next to the front door. But customers often don’t realize they need a basket until they’ve already taken two items off the shelf, and at that point they’re more likely to check out and leave than come all the way back to the front of the store for a basket. Solution: have piles of baskets in various places in the store, or tell employees to offer customers a basket when they need one.

I thought of Underhill a few minutes ago when I was shopping at my local Walgreens, which I’ve been doing a little more often ever since [Merlin Mann](http://www.youlooknicetoday.com/) recommended their deluxe mixed nuts, which includes brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, almonds, and no peanuts. When you hit the checkout at Walgreens, the cashier is required to ask if you want to try the featured product of the week, which is conveniently placed on the counter next to you. This week it’s some unappealing frozen soda product, like a cola-flavored Otter Pop. The cashiers could not sound less enthusiastic if they were recommending a home enema product. I don’t know Paco Underhill personally, and he seems like a gentle guy, but I suspect this sort of thing makes him want to punch marketing executives in the head.

It’s not like it would be impossible to have great customer service at a discount drugstore. Walgreens sells a lot of different products, and among them, I’m sure, are products that employees actually think are cool. That’s where I first saw Magic Erasers, which make my walls sparkle, and low-discharge rechargeable batteries, which make my camera happy. At my local bookstore, [Bailey-Coy Books](http://baileycoybooks.com/default.aspx), employees write recommendation cards for books they think are cool, the same sort of thing you see in wine shops. (“Shelf talker” is the term of art, I think, although that can mean a printed card from the manufacturer, too.) I would have bought the erasers and the batteries a lot sooner with a handwritten testimonial from an employee–unless the testimony was coerced, which would have been obvious (although probably funny). Probably I’m piling another responsibility on overworked employees, but hey, at least make the cards available and see what happens.

I really enjoy a good sales experience–that’s part of the appeal of going to a restaurant. Walgreens seems to want to make sure that I don’t have one.

Today on Gourmet.com:

[Okonomiyaki: The Pancake Pizza](http://www.gourmet.com/food/2008/04/okonomiyaki)

> I’d never cooked with mountain potato before, and it’s pretty awesome: It appears to be an ordinary daikon-like root vegetable, but when it hits the grater, it immediately turns into ribbons of slime. (Fresh-tasting slime that helps give okonomiyaki its toothsome texture, I hasten to add.)

**edit:** Here’s the okonomiyaki I made for myself: