Sometimes, the best of intentions go awry. Fortunately, there's always frozen puff pastry.

Emergency desserts during the summer are easy -- who needs to gild perfect berries? -- but as autumn settles in, it's more of a challenge to impress VIP guests, say, eight culinary experts called for a special meeting. And you're supposed to make dessert. No pressure.

When your beautiful pears are still hard and you don't have a single hour more to ripen them in that handy paper bag, it's time for poaching.

Make a simple syrup by mixing together in a saucepan 1 part water, 1 part sugar, ribbons of lemon peel, and a few knobs of ginger. Crush the ginger to relieve stress and release flavor.

Peel your pears and cut them in half. Use a small spoon or melon baller to scoop out the core, and then plop the fruit into the poaching liquid.

Bring to a simmer over medium-high, and then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Press a round of parchment up against the pears to keep them moist all around and to help cook them evenly. (Remember this tip for matzo balls and red-cooked pork, too.) Make the round just a tad bit smaller than the diameter of the pan, and cut a venting hole at the center. If you don't have parchment paper, use a smaller pot lid or a flat saucer to keep the pears immersed, but be careful not to press dents into the softening fruit.

They're ready when the tip of a paring knife cuts easily to the center, 20 minutes for some pears, 40 for others.

For tiny tartlets that will be served on a buffet, cut the pears in quarters and then slice thinly. If you're making one big tart for friends or family, just make parallel slices almost to the stem ends and then fan open each pear half.

Make a frangipane filling by throwing a cup of blanched or slivered almonds into your food processor. (If you don't have a food processor, buy almond meal from the nut vendors at the farmers market or visit the baking aisle at your local Trader Joe's.) Follow with a couple of eggs, 3/4 stick of soft butter (though I've been known to use the cold, hard stuff) and 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar. Flavor with a pinch of salt and a good dash of vanilla. Buzz until a smooth, thick but spreadable mixture forms. Set this aside.

Now for the crust...

Dufour is my favorite, but Trader Joe's also sells a good all-butter puff pastry that's worth keeping in your freezer.

Thaw the pastry as directed on the package label. Most call for a few hours in the refrigerator, followed by a few minutes at room temperature. You'll need to work quickly to prevent the butter layers from melting into each other, so gather all your cutters, pans, fillings and glazes before you take the pastry out of the refrigerator.

Make an egg wash by mixing together 1 egg and 1 tablespoon water just until foam begins to form.

For small tartlets, you'll need to roll the pastry pretty thin, say 1/8 inch. If you're making one large tart, you can stop at 1/4 inch, but don't leave it too thick, or your layers will rise so high they'll deform and spill your filling. Those who were good at Tetris should be able to squeeze 18 to 24 tartlets, each 1-1/2 inch across, out of one sheet of puff pastry.

Be sure to use a sharp knife or pastry round to cut cleanly through the dough. Pressing the rim of a glass or a dull, plastic cutter into your pastry will simply seal together all those lovely layers. Use a small amount of flour as need to prevent sticking, but don't overdo it. Fastidious bakers will keep a soft brush handy to flick away excess flour.

Cut twice as many rounds as you'll need. Switch to a smaller cutter to punch out the centers of half of the rounds to form rings. Brush the bases lightly but evenly with egg wash, then press the ring onto each large round to make a lip for the filling.

If you don't have pastry rounds, cut small squares with a sharp knife, then cut thin strips to press around the edges. Square tarts are easy, yet look très elegant.

Prick the bottom crust once or twice with a fork.

If you have time, freeze the crusts for 15 to 30 minutes before baking. Preheat the oven to 425 F (or whatever the package says) and bake the crusts for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on their size. Remove them when they are puffed but do not let them take on color. Reduce the oven to 375 F.

Spread a thin layer of the nut filling into the center of the crusts. Top with the sliced fruit. I like to arrange the fruit with a bit of height for some drama on the buffet.

Bake the tartlet's again for about 20 minutes, or until the filling is golden brown.

For a more casual affair, one big tart is fine. It'll need to be baked for a longer amount of time, say 30 to 40 minutes, but it's a lot less fuss upfront.

Let the tarts cool on a rack for maximum crispness. For this batch of tartlets, I reduced the poaching liquid to a thick syrup, and then brushed the pear slices with it for a nice, finishing sheen. You can melt a clear, pale jelly such as apple or white wine-thyme. Or you can just use honey.

The tarts can be frozen at several points: after rolling and cutting, after the first baking and before filling, or after baking completely. Like with roasting chickens, it doesn't that much more time to make two rather than one, so go ahead and make extra. Frozen tartlets take only 15 minutes at 275 F to warm up.

Extra poached pears make an excellent topping for pancakes, waffles or French toast. Slice and rewarm in butter and brown sugar.

Finally, just as doughnut holes are among my favorite treats, the centers of the tartlet rounds end up becoming even more fun to eat then the tarts themselves. Brush with egg wash, sprinkle with fleur de sel and cumin seeds, bake for 10 minutes, and enjoy while still warm with a slice of cheese, a glass of wine and a huge sigh of relief.

I lined up plates in the order they appeared on the menu. This trick helps cooks plate food with speed and efficiency during a busy service.

Last week many of you participated in having a bit of fun with your food. You played The Plated Dessert Menu Game! Although it began as a lark, I must admit I might make this a regular thing if I get another pastry chef job in a restaurant. Many of you created a menu the likes of which I would not have thought of myself! Thank you! (I hope, of course, that it means you are adventurous eaters as well, supporting dedicated pastry chefs wherever you eat...)

Every day since the dessert tasting/job interview, my phone voicemail and email inbox has been full of one question, "So, how did it go?" But I don't know what to say. They sat, I plated, we ate, we talked, I left. There were 6 of them and one of me. The chef I've been discussing this position with for the last 4 months asked me to speak about what was on the table, another chef asked a lot of questions, a few comments were made and now it's all about the waiting game.

I did get to be really nerdy when it came to talking about the history of butterscotch, and why a graham cracker is called that, and why one need understand osmotic reciprocity when attempting to cook rhubarb. That was extremely fun and satisfying!

And it was amazing to see desserts that had been living in my head, as ideas or a dizzying array of free-floating components, come together on a plate, be set forth in front of humans, and eaten as if they were finished sentences, cohesive concrete visions. Like digital photography, plated dessert making can produce immediate results, an on-the-spot culmination of the conceptual and the actual.

Of course one hopes that one's desserts will also be delicious.

Without further ado, I give you The Menu presented as my dessert tasting on Monday May 14, 2007, 12 noon, at an undisclosed downtown San Francisco restaurant for the purpose of trying out for a pastry chef job:

Butterscotch Pot de creme with Pecan Shortbread
-- Extra component: chantilly.
Cherries & Cream, a Napoleon with Poetic License
-- Double vanilla shortbread, carnaroli rice pudding infused with California Bay Laurel, cherries reduced in cherry vinegar and pitted cherries au natural.
Ricotta Cheesecake with Crunchy Poached Rhubarb
-- Served with rhubarb-rose geranium sauce.
Warm Milk Chocolate with Various Chocolate Textures and Malted Ice Cream
-- El Rey milk chocolate veloute baked atop Devil's Food Cake lifted by cocoa meringue, warmed by hot fudge sauce and garnished with malt ice cream sitting on candied cacao nibs.
Hot Doughnuts with Blushing Sugar and An Egg Cream Chaser
-- Pate a choux doughnuts rolled in sugar made with mesquite flour, fleur de sel and ground cacao nibs served with vanilla bean egg cream.
Bright Lemon Baked Alaska, Brown Butter and Shuna's Famous Graham Crackers
-- Shuna's famous graham crackers sitting against lemon sherbet and brown butter ice cream hiding under torched Swiss meringue.

The cherry Napoleon.

Warm Milk Chocolate with Various Chocolate Textures and Malted Ice Cream.

I've written about a number of plated dessert tastings I've done in the past few years. Interested in knowing more? Click here.

Thank you, all of you, for playing last week's game, reading, imagining, and coming along for the ride!

One of the first cookbooks in my collection is also one of my favorites: Polish Heritage Cookery. I came across this heavy tome at a quirky bookstore that once lived on Polk Street, before a fire ravaged the floors above and water rained down upon its randomly, precariously stacked books. The store's hours were irregular, and those who paid in cash received half off new cover prices. While it was the absolute last place a claustrophobe would want to spend time, Books and Co. was heaven for lovers of books about art, history and food. It epitomized the browsing experience at its most enjoyable.

Polish Heritage Cookery has the voice I miss in old recipes, where strong opinions and sometimes random advice were sprinkled in among the teaspoons and tablespoons. The authors, Robert and Maria Strybel, gathered an impressive 2,200 recipes covering a wide expanse from vanilla sugar to air-dried Pomeranian pork sausage. While illustrated with helpful drawings for the more complicated recipes, the book is free of photographs. Instead, the recipes unroll in story-like paragraphs and Polish names add poetry to every title. Old World classics and their multiple variations reveal Lithuanian, Italian, French, Jewish, Bohemian and Bavarian influences and trace a fascinating culinary history of Eastern European food.

Whey Soup with Rice (or the sweeter Whey Soup with Raisins), Roast Hare in Sour Cream Polonaise, Carp Baked with Apples, Carpathian Mountain Cake, Cherry Butter, and pages upon pages of pickle recipes include hints that only a grandmother might pass along. Adding skins from black bread helps "hurry-up" the curing of pickles. A glass of cold sour milk is recommended for the morning after "an overabundance of partying." At the end of a baked potato recipe, the authors note that adding a piece of kielbasa and a tomato would make a balanced meal, while on the next page, hearty Potato and Salt Pork Sausage is not recommended for "those with delicate stomachs."

The most stained pages in my own copy of the Strybels' cookbook span the pastry and preserve chapters. For the last two years, I've been hosting Doughnuts of the World brunches. A loose definition of doughnut allows me to experiment with angel wings, churros and beignets. Polish jam-filled paczki, however, would please even the most hard-core of the purists.

Below are excerpts from the Strybels' detailed description for making small paczki.

Homemade raspberry jam stands in for the rose-hip jelly, cherry preserves or powidla (thick plum butter) suggested in the original recipe.

"Although these luscious doughnuts are available year-round at Polish pastry shops, they reign supreme on Thusty Czwartek (Fat Tuesday), which begins the final fling of the Pre-Lenten karnawal of zapusty. More paczki are sold that day than at any other time of the year. You can try your hand at making your own by proceeding according to this recipe. Dissolve 2 cakes crushed yeast in 1 c. lukewarm milk, sift in 1 c. flour, add 1 T. sugar, mix, cover, and let stand in a warm place to rise. Beat 8 egg yolks with 2/3 c. powdered sugar and 2 T. vanilla sugar until fluffy. Sift 2 1/2 c. flour into bowl, add sponge, egg mixture, and 2 T. grain alcohol or 3 T. rum, and knead well until dough is smooth and glossy. Gradually add 1 stick melted lukewarm butter and continue kneading until dough no longer clings to hands and bowl and air blisters appear. Cover with cloth and let rise in warm place until doubled. Punch down dough and let rise again. Transfer dough to floured board, sprinkle top with flour, and roll out about 1/2 inch thick. With glass or biscuit cutter, cut into rounds. Arrange on floured board." [NB: I substituted 1 1/2 packets of dry yeast for the yeast cakes.]

The soft dough feels lovely. Still, some of my guests decide flat, American-style jelly doughnuts are easier to form and fry.

"Place a small spoonful of fruit filling (rose-hip preserves, cherry preserves, powidla, or other thick jam) off center on each round. Raise edges of dough and pinch together over filling, then roll between palms snowball fashion to form balls. Let rise in warm place until doubled."

The Strybel's write that Polish pastries like paczki "may be fried in vegetable shortening or oil instead of lard, but they won't be as tasty. The choice is yours."

"Heat 1 1/2-2 lbs. lard in deep pan so paczki can float freely during frying. It is hot enough when a small piece of dough dropped into the hot fat immediately floats up. Fry packzi under cover without crowding several min. until nicely browned on bottom, then turn over and fry uncovered on the other side another 3 min. or so. If fat begins to burn, add several slices of peeled raw potato which will both lower the temp. and absorb any burnt flavor. Transfer fried paczki to absorbent paper and set aside to cool, When cool, dust generously with powdered sugar, glaze or icing."