Cards

• No rolling pin? Pick up a wide wooden dowel at the hardware store or use a clean (empty) wine bottle.
  
• (Alton uses a slingshot to remind viewers about stretchy gluten) AB slipped at this point and put the camera’s eye out. You can avoid such disasters by resting that dough!
  
• Other tart friendly fruits: pear, mango, strawberry, nectarine.
  
• If you’re not ready to bake, cover the tarts with wax paper and refrigerate them for up to a day.
  
• Large tarts can be cooked directly on a pizza stone heated to 400°
  
• Remember: stretching is bad so when cutting puff, err on the large side
  
• For a fancier roof, weave together individual strips of puff.
  
• Frozen berries can also be used if thawed and tossed liberally with sugar
  
• Alton’s favorite puff filling? Manwich mix and cheddar cheese.

Outside Expert: Chef Michael McCurdy of the Atlanta Art Institute School of Culinary Arts

Alton: Who’s the laminated pastry that’s always fast, always tasty?
Chorus: Puff!

Alton: You know how sometimes a really nice frame can save a really cheap piece of art? Well in this dish, the puff pastry is the really nice frame and these canned pie cherries are the really cheap art. But, hey, we can't all be Martha Stewart.

Alton: Who’s the dough that’s gonna get you where you go? (pauses for singers but gets nothing) I gotta figure out where those girls are… until next time this is...
Chorus: Good Eats!
Alton: I give up.

The episode takes its name from the song Puff the Magic Dragon that Peter, Paul and Mary made enormously famous and popular. The song describes an ageless dragon with magical breath and how his friend Jackie Paper eventually outgrows him.

The entire opening montage, loosely titled “Puff” is an homage (or send-up, if you prefer) to Isaac Hayes’ song “Shaft” written for the 1971 film Shaft starring Richard Roundtree.

Alton’s intonation of the phrase “wafer thin” calls up memories of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, a 1983 film made up of segments roughly corresponding to the phases of life. In one segment, the obsequious host of a restaurant persuades enormously fat Mr. Creosote to end his meal with a mint that is “wafer thin” despite Creosote’s protestation that he cannot eat another bite. Alton pronounces the phrase in the same way the restaurateur did. The sad fate of Mr. Creosote is best left to the imagination!

A slide that appears while Alton pulls back on a slingshot mentions that he “slipped and put the camera’s eye out.” This is likely a reference to 1983’s A Christmas Story whose main character Ralphie Parker wants very much for Santa to bring him an “Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two Hundred Shot Range Model Air Rifle!” Sadly, every adult to whom he expressed this wish responded that he would shoot his eye out; the repeated line is one of the memorable quotes from the film.

Alton's comment that "we can't all be Martha Stewart" refers to a business magnate whose principal claim to fame lies in her homemaking skills, including recipes with elaborate presentations. She has built a successful business around these skills and her ability and desire to teach them to others through television and print media.