Assigned demos for the sweethearts' holiday from the meat department were Cornish Game Hens... easy to cook, easy to screw up, and not necessarily a big favorite ("there are too many bones!" "What is that, a BABY chicken?" etc, etc)
Add to this the ever present question of trying to keep hot food hot for a four to five hour demo, without drying it out, of course, and here's a conundrum. Oh wait... then there's Meat, wanting their product to be the center of attention, customers wanting to be able to buy it already cooked (Wait, that makes it another department's) and the store insisting that we are doing demos as "Try It To Buy It"... please, how do you make everyone happy?
OK, how's this? Use store branded Apricot Preserves, (Grocery) and melt it into a glaze with a bit of Earth Balance Non-Soy Butter Substitute (Dairy) and a healthy fistful of crushed fresh rosemary from Produce. Stuff the birds with, and lay them on a bed of, Wild Rice Pilaf from Prepared Food. Baste generously with the glaze, and cook the birds for the full 50 minutes needed to get them up to 165F, then cover half of them with foil & leave in the warm oven. Plate up for demo with Bakehouse Baguettes (Bakery) with a bit of perfectly ripe Fromager D'Affinois (Specialty) and the only Team I've left out is Seafood. If they'd given me the lobster I asked for, I'd have figured out a way to use it. Two hundred and forty-nine pounds of CGH in four days. We'd have sold more if we hadn't run out. Also, not a single scrap of prepared rice pilaf in the store, and there was a gaping hole in the shelf where the Apricot Preserves live. Whew.
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