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Happy New Year, Everyone!

Things we learned on our first New Year's Eve in the new space:

If you inflate a lot of helium balloons and let them go all at once in the dining room, they hit the frames of the light fixtures and explode rapidly, hailing down latex and ribbon as your startled set- up crew dives for cover.

Our courtyard is probably one of the better places in town to see fireworks launched from Congress Park. (Who knew?)

It is probably more merciful to leave your infant/toddler children at home on New Year's Eve with a sitter than make them live through restaurant hours. But when the fireworks start going off and the helium balloons are being batted around, you really miss them.

Posting security guards to preserve parking spaces for the people on our New Year' s Eve guest list fails to work if both guards go to the bathroom at the same time.
Fava beans have a strange and unexpected effect on gelatine. Repeated attempts to construct a vegetable terrine were undermined by the center layer of fava beans. The first one they did, they sliced in half and the gelatine around the fava beans squirted out, causing the entire thing to collapse.

"It was stable around the peas, it was stable around the mushrooms, it was stable around the swiss chard," Paul said shaking his head. "I dunno what was happening with the favas."

"Do you think they leached out moisture?" souschef Mark Lawrence asked.

"That's one possibility," Paul said, "but they don't have that much moisture. It could be one of those interactions like fresh pineapple and gelatine. It could be that they were too large compared to the other vegetables and they created air bubbles. It could be that we kept putting them in the center because we thought it would look cool, but it was too heavy for the center of the delicate loaf."

We know, because we get cool food-science books as gifts all the time, that favas are a special bean. They should not be eaten by people taking antidepressants of the MAO-inhibitor type, and they can cause severe anemia in people of certain ethnic backgrounds (Mediterranean, Asian, Arab, African) who suffer from inherited glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency.

By presstime, Cheryl had not been able to uncover if favas have some other special quality such as the protease in pineapple, which is an enzyme that breaks down proteins. If pineapple is not boiled, it will digest the gelatin, leaving nothing but soup behind.

In the end, Paul and Mark froze the vegetable terrine, and it took two people to cut it and flip it onto the plates intact.

Paul and his excellent kitchen staff worked so hard at preparing for the nine-course second seating menu that the food was actually coming up in the kitchen faster than eight servers could carry it.

"It was easier and more difficult than I thought," Chef Paul said.
"We were fortunate to have a very forthcoming staff. A lot of the hard part was that there was so much prep to do starting a couple of days before on things we had never done before, because that's the nature of the meal."
The Pink Plate Special this week will be les oiseaux sans têtes, otherwise known as veal cutlets wrapped around mozzarella, grana padano, cured ham and Tuscan kale from Kilpatrick Farm, braised in white wine. (The name translates as birds without heads.) Another name for this dish is paupiettes de veau, which literally translates as veal puppets. Both of the names of these dishes date from a time when people still had a sense of humor and knew their food more intimately than they do now.

One of the two cheeses in the puppets is Grana Padano, which was created at the beginning of the millennium by the Cistercian monks of Chiaravalle as a way of preserving surplus milk. Between 1150 and 1200 a large number of cheese-makers became engaged in the production of Grana Padano, and by 1477 it was held to be the most famous cheese of Italy. This sweet and savoury cheese became a particular favourite of the people of Lombardy and its production spread throughout the region. As it lasts a long time without spoiling, Grana Padano could also be sold to outlying markets. Historical documents describe its progressive diffusion. The name Grana was popularly bestowed upon the cheese because of its "grainy" consistency, which was markedly different from the other cheeses known until then. It began to appear with greater frequency as an ingredient in the foods of aristocrats and commoners alike. Grana Padano is a cylindrical, cooked, semi-fat hard cheese which is matured slowly. It may be used as a table cheese or for grating. A golden oily rind encases a white or straw-coloured fine-grained cheese with crumbly fissures radiating outwards from the centre. The taste is fragrant and delicate, and the cheese preserves its integrity for one or two years. Grana Padano is produced throughout the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto, and in the provinces of Trento, Bologna, Ferrara and Forlì.

The Pink Plate is a weekly prix fixe special we offer on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. For $30 per person, you get your choice of soup or salad, the featured entree, two selections from our cheese board or one of a couple of featured desserts and coffee, tea or espresso.

Those fresh smelts which Paul was promised are supposed to arrive late tomorrow, which means Paul will be able to serve them Saturday.
He doesn't want to be too specific in case the promised little fish don't arrive. Half of them will be cured and half fried, and he wants to serve them on skewers.

We also plan to offer axis venison from Broken Arrow Ranch in Texas this week.
Axis, also known as chital or spotted Indian deer, were brought to Texas in the 1930s by hunters and released. They flourished so rampantly that back in 1988 a Texas Parks and Wildlife survey estimated 39,040 Axis deer were ranging free in Texas. They can also be found now in Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Michigan, California, Hawaii, Florida and zoos in most states.
Per ounce, an uncooked Axis steak has .06 grams of fat, 26 calories, and 13.9 mg cholesterol. By comparison, skinless chicken has .88 grams of fat, 34 calories, and 20.0 mg cholesterol. Lean beef has
1.76 grams of fat, 41 calories, and 16.86 mg cholesterol.
Probably because the deer eat grass, the meat does not have a "gamey"
taste like whitetail.
Paul plans to prepare the deer with currants and port.
We've set a date for or Warm Lake Wine Dinner, which was postponed in November because of a confluence of scheduling conflicts. The dinner will now be held on January 31 and will feature the wines of Warm Lake, a New York State winery on the Niagara Escarpment near Lake Ontario. The winemaking, done on a small scale, employs Old World techniques; the pinot noir fruit is triaged, punched down manually and vinified in French oak barrels. The grapes from four different sections of the vineyard are vinified separately, than blended by vintner Michael Von Heckler to make two dinner wines, Warm Lake Estate and Mountain Road.

Our wine dinners will feature a tasting of each of the four component wines and the Estate wine. Then we'll sit down to a warming soup as a palate cleanser and enjoy the Mountain Road with coq au vin. We'll finish with Warm Lake's dessert pinot noir with cheeses and desserts.
http://www.warmlakeestate.com
These dinner is limited to 20 people around a single table in our private dining room.
Cost: $80 per person, plus tax and gratuity

Live Piano Jazz
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays the baby grand Tuesday through Friday night, and during Sunday brunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
(barring special events that preclude live music.)
Cost: No cover charge

Tango Class
January 10th
Tango instructors Diane Lachtrupp and Johnny Martinez will offer a free tango class to Chez Sophie customers at 8:30, with open dancing afterwards. We plan to repeat this feature on the second Wednesday of each month. For those who would like to dine first before dancing, our regular menu is offered until 9 p.m. The bar menu is available until 10 p.m. and the bar will be open for at least a couple of hours after that. For more information about local classes by Diane and Johnny, see the Saratoga Savoy website at http://www.saratogasavoy.com/files/instructors.html
Cost: No cover charge

Tasting menus
Chef's Choice seven-course tasting menu available each night. The menus are designed based on the best and most creative dishes Chef Paul K. Parker is serving each evening. We will pair wines for you or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $75 per person, plus tax and tip. Everyone at the table must partake in the tasting menu

If you're feeling less impromptu, you can call ahead to arrange a special tasting menu with the number of courses and wine pairings designed to suit your capacity, dietary restrictions and budget.
Tasting menus arranged in advance will be printed on commemorative vellum scrolls personalized with the name of the host or the reason for the event.
Cost: $50 to $200, depending on the number of courses and the wines selected; available for two to 75 guests Call Cheryl to make arrangements 518.583.3538

The Pink Plate Special
offered Monday, January 8 through Thursday, January 11

$30 per person
includes your choice of soup or salad, a special entree, selected desserts or a cheese course and coffee, tea or espresso.

This week's special entree:

l'oiseau sans tête

(veal cutlets stuffed with mozzarella, grana padano, Tuscan kale and cured ham)

Notes on Nico and Léo:
The weather was so beautiful Thursday afternoon Cheryl played hooky with Nico and Léo and took them to the park. When she got to the restaurant around 4 p.m., the babysitter was waiting by the door with a stroller, waiting to take them to the park. "Nico, I think you should use the potty before you go back out," Mommy advised. He pushed his friend, Arianna, toward the door of the nursery and said:
"Please step outside. I need a little piracy."

Léo is officially walking, although not all the time, and only five or six steps at a go. This week she added "Hi, "Happy" and "Up" to her previous lexicon, which was largely limited to "Mamamamamama."
Nico played with an autistic 3-year-old at the park whose mother was explaining that her son had said his first word, "Mommy" the week before, but was really good at sign language. Nico patted the woman consolingly and said: "It's all right. My baby sister can barely say it either."

The battle to limit Nico's video game and cartoon intake continues.
His baby sitter told him Wednesday that he couldn't touch the computer until after dinner. Cheryl came in to the office and sat holding her son while constructing a menu for a private party later that night. Paul was making a sandwich for himself and brought his wife half, but she was too busy to touch it. Finally, Nico asked if he could have it. "Is this a snack?" Nico asked. "Mmm-hmm," Mommy said distractedly. "This is too big for a snack," he announced. "This must be dinner." Cheryl almost agreed before she realized the little schemer was just trying to get to the computer faster. "I almost got you, Mommy," he said with a giggle.

After an exhausting morning trying to catch up on laundry and housework Monday, Cheryl settled Nico down with one of those electronic alphabet games and put Léo down for a nap. She took a moment to return a stack of phone messages, warning Nico not to wake his sister. Five minutes later, she heard small feet pounding the wood floors and the sound of the Lone Ranger theme emanating from one of the electronic toys. Nico dashed from the living room down the hallway past the foyer and right on top of his no longer sleeping sister and announced: "Mommy, I ran and ran and played the horsey song and it's my favorite song in the whole world!"

P.S. Cheryl and Paul's full-time baby-sitter for the past 2.5 years gave two weeks notice Thursday night. We are looking for someone wonderful in the capacity of babysitter, nanny, au pair etc, that will make sense. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

We hope to see you soon,

The Parker family
at chez sophie
518-583-3538

Chez Sophie was founded in 1969 by sculptor Joseph Parker and his French-born wife, the late Sophie. The business moved to a vintage stainless steel diner in Malta Ridge, New York, in 1995. It is owned today by Sophie and Joseph's son, Paul Parker, and his wife, Cheryl Clark. In June of 2006, they moved the restaurant into their current location in The Saratoga Hotel on Broadway..

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