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"Is it possible to cure fish with curry powder?" Cheryl called out into the kitchen as she was proofreading the alterations to the night's menu.
"You cure things with salt," Chef Paul answered without looking up.
"Then what is curry-cured mackerel?" she asked.
"Uh.. fish cured with salt and curry?" Souschef Mark Graham ventured.
"We have wasabi-cured salmon sometimes."
Cheryl thought it through. "I'm going to let that one go on historical grounds. But can someone tell me how you braise a quail in a muscat?"
Chef Paul, knowing full well what his wife was asking, nevertheless began to lecture: "Braising is a method of cooking in liquid..."
"Yes, I know that, dear," his wife interrupted (as he says she so often does.) "How do you get the quail inside the grape?"
"It's not the grape, it's a wine called Muscat of Chersonesus," Paul said.
"Then can we say that?" Cheryl asked. "You guys are naming these dishes in ways that don't make sense grammatically or logically."
"That's just because you're a journalist," garde manger Brian Netzel chimed in, and everyone in the kitchen laughed and jeered.
"Yeah, probably," Cheryl agreed, the insult lost upon her.

There is this weird tendency in modern restaurant menu writing to precede every noun with a hyphenated compound modifier.
Cheryl found the same phenomenon when she worked in newspapers, where young reporters would try to make their writing sound like "news"
rather than speech. The result was jargony jibberish.
These days, salmon is wasabi-cured, mackerel is curry-cured, and everything else is pan-seared or herb-seasoned or flame-broiled or oven-fired or applewood-smoked or pear-stuffed or spit-roasted. It's not just our kitchen geniuses who are doing it. Invariably, two ingredients and a compound cooking method must proceed the featured attraction in any dish, as in "honey-lemon hand-battered monkfish nestled in couscous." Sweetbreads are port-poached and venison is coffee-cured; dates are bacon-wrapped and Niman Ranch shortribs are Oaxacan-spice-braised; duck breast is cinnamon-smoked; mushrooms are hand-foraged or dawn-picked (we don't know who Dawn is, but she must be very busy).

Paul just read this and suggested that Cheryl change the mackerel description to "curried cured mackerel with chickpea and green tomato salad." No hyphen. Small linguistic victories. Sort of.

Mackerel, by the way, is one of Paul's favorites fishies although he
says: "I think it's misunderstood. And the way we're doing it is flipping delicious." Cheryl asked what he meant by misunderstood and he said a lot of people simply refuse to eat it, "and I don't know why they don't like it. It doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe because they've had it not fresh? I know that as a child I never particularly liked it until I had it as sushi, then I became a convert. It's not a mild fish, and maybe in the same way that Americans like light beer they like light fish. But I think it's extraordinary."

Cheryl enlisted Nico and Léo in the planning for next week's children's Halloween costume party, and not surprisingly, there are now a lot of dinosaurs involved. There are dinosaur plates for the snacks, dinosaur bingo for a party game and dinosaur prizes for the winners. We looked online for other party game ideas and came up with Pass the Pumpkin (like Duck, Duck Goose), Halloween Corners (an elimination game like Dodgeball, but without the violence); Pumpkin Toss (kids can keep any package of candy they can throw into a pumpkin-shaped bucket); Mummy Wrap (which team can cover a kid in a whole roll of toilet paper first?) and Guess the Pumpkin's Weight (pretty obvious.)

The Halloween party was conceived last year. Halloween is always a miserably slow night for fine restaurants because so many people are at home handing out candy or trying to do something their costumed kiddies would find fun. When Nico was 2, we took him door to door for the first time. In our rural neighborhood, very few people were home, and the distance between the houses was more than the little guy could do on foot, especially since we'd dressed him in a horse suit.
The next year, we asked other parents what they were doing, and they were all going to trick-or-treat from store to store at the mall, which just seemed a terrible way to spend any time at all, on any day, under any circumstances. So we latched ourselves on to the trick- or-treating of our next door neighbors, two very bright, inventive school teachers with two children slightly older than Nico. We caravaned from neighborhood to neighborhood, buckling and unbuckling the children from the carseats about a hundred times as we visited the Balets' parents, aunts, uncles, friends and colleagues.

Last year, we had infant Léo, who hadn't quite learned to walk, as well as Nico, who was old enough to remember the whole Halloween thing. So we threw a party, hoping that our customers would bring their kids for our kids to play with and maybe fill our dining room a bit at the same time so Halloween wouldn't be quite so dismal for those of us who had to work. The party was small, but it was great fun, so we're doing it again this year.

The party starts at 5 p.m. and will go on until everybody leaves.
Admission for children is $6, which includes kid-friendly food, beverages and prizes and party favors. Please reserve ahead if possible, both for the party and if you'd like a table for dinner.

The Pink Plate Special this coming week will be calves' liver. We once had a theory that there was a biological imperative that made it necessary for one person in every romantic couple to hate liver.
Cheryl, in an unusual violation of her usual reserve about personal information, once advanced this theory to two women who had been coming to the restaurant together since Chef Paul could balance himself on their knees in his short pants. She discovered at that point that they weren't a romantic couple, but merely lifelong business partners. Ouch.

It takes guts to sell liver as a Pink Plate Special. This will either entice you into the restaurant in a way that nothing else could or repel you, depending on which half of the obligatory romantic couple you are. He sautées calves liver with onions and shallots, smoked bacon and serves it with a balsamic vinegar sauce.

The Pink Plate is a weekly prix fixe special we offer on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. For $32 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.

We'll also be serving braised oxtail with chestnut tagliatelle.
Oxtail stew very likely originated during the French Revolution, when the slaughterhouses sent hides to the tanneries without cleaning them, leaving the tails on. A thrifty French noble asked for a tail, which was given him gratis. Soon, the soup he made became popular, and the tanneries started charging for pieces of tail. (A tradition maintained to this day throughout Paris and indeed most of France.)

We might occasionally serve our peas with honey, but we don't do mint jelly with lamb. There was a famous incident in the old diner where we did serve mint jelly once. When we bought the diner location in 1995, there was a solo jar of store-brand mint jelly in the basement, and Sophie never threw it out, because she abhorred waste. For years, we moved our supplies around this lonely, dusty jar. After Sophie died in 2001, it became one of those unspoken quirks. No one touched it, no one moved it. Occasionally someone would ask about it while stocking a pantry shelf, and an employee would whisper: "That's Sophie's jelly."

Then one day, a new waiter noticed the jar while shelving deliveries. A few days later, a customer asked for mint jelly, and the waiter helpfully ran downstairs, grabbed the holy jar, unsealed it and spooned the gelatinous green goo into a ramekin. It was nearly consumed before Paul and Cheryl found out about this transgression of style, and there was really nothing to be done about it, by then.
It's not that mint is evil. Mint and lamb is a classic pairing in many cultures - England, Italy, France, Morocco, and so on.
"The reason for mint jelly with lamb goes back to when they served mutton, which is a really strongly flavored meat," Chef Paul said.
"Real English mint jelly, the good stuff, tended to be a potent, spicy condiment, which is what you need to balance a strong meat.
What remains of that, the stuff you get in the supermarket, is pretty watered down. It's overly sweet, it has no pepper, it has no spice, but people got used to green jelly and lamb, at least in America, even when the lamb was mild. It's a 50s thing."

Paul has an answer to mint jelly, a spicy, vinegary sauce he makes with fresh mint, honey and white wine vinegar. He'll be offering it this week, and it should be perfect with Alsatian wine.

He's also got a cool idea for duck "kir noir." A kir is a tart white wine, usually aligoté de Bourgogne, served with a dollop of cassis, a black currant liqueur. (a kir royale is when the same treatment is applied to Champagne or sparkling wine.) A kir noir is pinot noir with cassis added, which is what Paul plans to do for the duck sauce.

Fresh figs are abundant right now, and he's planning to serve rabbit with figs and rosemary. He'll confit the legs (that's cured with salt and fat) and serve the rich, tender stuff with fig salad, either fresh or roasted, he hasn't decided yet. He'll also roast a piece of the rabbit loin and serve it on the same plate for contrast.

We offer a fun and elegant à la carte brunch on both Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday, our artist-in-residence, jazz pianist Cole Broderick, plays the baby grand piano from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The brunch menu this Saturday and Sunday will feature rainbow trout Provençal with basmati rice ($15); pan-seared chicken breast with green peppercorn, Port and Madeira sauce ($15); apple-stuffed pancake with your choice of bacon or sausage ($13); and spicy Vietnamese-style strip steak with smashed potatoes ($15). Appetizer specials include Rhode Island Littleneck clams steamed in white wine with garlic and herbs ($13); a salad of Sunset Hill Farm greens tossed in a red wine vinaigrette ($7); cheese and charcuterie ($13) and soup of the day ($8).

The brunch specials run from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. The complete menu,
offered from 7 to 2 p.m., includes a Continental assortment of
muffins, pastries, fruit, yogurt, frittata etcetera for $9;
omelettes ($10 to $12); pancakes du jour ($10); the All in One, which includes 2 eggs any style, homefries, toast and sausage or bacon ($10); waffles with sweet cream butter and local maple syrup ($10); and Irish steel- cut oatmeal ($8).

Cheryl and Cole will be promoting their new CD, "Chez Sophie Jazz"
on WAMC public radio's Performance Place in a 35-minute live broadcast is scheduled for Monday, October 29 at 11:23 a.m.

We would be delighted if those of our customers who are so inclined would consider joining our family for Thanksgiving at Chez Sophie. We will be serving Thanksgiving dinner from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 22. This was a huge and wonderful day for us last year, and we were surprised at how many people wanted to eat out at Chez Sophie on Thanksgiving, rather than cook at home. We'll be offering free-range turkey and all the trimmings, with fresh-baked pies for dessert for $40 per person, plus tax and gratuity. An à la carte dinner menu will also be available. Turkey dinner for children under 12 is $15.

We will also be offering a special five-course turkey tasting menu with four spectacular wine pairings for $100 a person, plus tax and gratuity, for those looking for an even more elegant and extraordinary repast. A credit card is required to confirm reservations for Thanksgiving.

We've also started booking reservations for New Year's Eve 2007, on Monday, December 31, 2007.
This is our most elegant party of the year, with festive decorations and special menus to make the evening memorable. Our early seating, with tables available at 5, 5:30, 6 and 6:30 p.m., will feature a prix fixe five-course menu including options for three of the courses, with a glass of Champagne included for $80 per person, plus tax and gratuity.
The New Year's Eve all-night party starts at 8 p.m., with seatings available at 8, 8:30, 9 and 9:30 p.m. The 9-course menu will feature options for three of the courses, with a midnight Champagne toast included. Jazz Pianist Cole Broderick plans to start playing at 8 p.m. The cost is $130 per person, plus tax and gratuity Special prix fixe wine menu available as well as our full wine list and bar.
The Saratoga has agreed to make double and king rooms available to Chez Sophie customers for $219 per night. Book early, because the hotel is always sold out on New Year's Eve.
Reservations required with credit card confirmation, call 518.583.3538.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Night Dinner December 24 and 25 Details to be announced We will be serving options suitable for families and for gourmands wishing for a special holiday meal. Rooms will be available to Chez Sophie customers at The Saratoga at a steep discount. ($79 per night.)

Live Piano Jazz
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays the baby grand Tuesday and 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

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 at an additional charge or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $80 to $200 per person for seven courses, 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: Depends on the number of courses and the wines selected; available for two to 75 guests. Call Cheryl to make arrangements at
518.583.3538

The Pink Plate Special
offered Monday, October 29, Tuesday, October 30, Wednesday, October 31, and Thursday, November 1.

$32 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:
calves liver with balsamic vinegar, bacon and shallots

Notes on Nico and Léo:
Paul has been reading Nico "The Hobbit" at bedtime. The going is pretty slow. At the end of each paragraph, Nico says: "Wait, Daddy. I just have one question."

We're on the waiting lists (with two separate companies) to have a new well dug at our home, so after more than three weeks, we're still taking advantage of the extremely generous offer of alternate lodging by two of our customers. Nico has begun to refer to our temporary shelter as "home," but Léo isn't fooled. She is, however, doing everything in her nearly-two-year-old powers to prove that the house isn't toddler proof. Nico learned to dismantle the child-proof cabinet locks at home when he was about 10 months old, so we haven't kept any cleaning chemicals or body products of note in our house for about 4 years. The rule of thumb is, if you can't eat it, don't use it.

We have on several occasions in the last week found Léo in a hypnotic trance, calmly poking Q-Tips into both of her ears so that she looks like a cat with whiskers. We understand this is potentially dangerous, so we've been confiscating the Q-Tips. It took us three days to figure out where she was getting them from - a bottom drawer in the bathroom, which she carefully closed each time so we wouldn't discover her stash. Now the rule is that the bathroom door has to be closed at all times (she can't work doorknobs yet) and she stands outside and knocks on the door, prostrates herself and tries to peer underneath, and sometimes just leans against the door sobbing because no one will let her in.

On Tuesday, Cheryl was washing the dinner dishes with Léo playing at her feet and heard the child say "Spicy!" and start to spit. She looked down to find that Léo had quietly snagged a little blue bottle from under the sink and was trying to delicately take a sip. Being a second-time Mom, Cheryl didn't freak out. She took the bottle and began to read the poison control information on the back. Meanwhile, Léo walked into the living room where her Dad was reading, climbed on his lap and announced, "Spicy!" Paul smelled her breath, and he did freak. "What did she get?" he roared in mounting panic. "I'm reading the label, and I think it's okay," Cheryl called from the kitchen.
"It's Jet-Dry, and I don't think she got much. Let's just rinse out her mouth."

Paul opined that water might be the wrong thing to do, that we should call Poison Control. "There's not even a poison control number on this bottle, so it can't be that hazardous," Cheryl said. "I think it's just like tasting soap. She looks fine, so let's just wash her mouth and give her some milk."

We washed her up and Cheryl went back into the kitchen to pour some milk. Léo sneaked right behind her, back into the same cabinet and began to decorate her dress with Fantastic spray cleaner. Paul walked passed his oblivious wife, and rescued the offending bottle from his child's grasp. While Cheryl changed Léo's dress, Paul began to try to invent child locks for all the cabinets with rubber bands and wooden spoons. (The spoons were an unnecessary flourish and just drew both children's attention to the contraptions.) Before bedtime, Nico went to the bathroom and Léo flowed in after him like quicksilver. Now hip to the fact that cabinets and drawers are off-limits, she worked quickly, because she could hear her mother pounding barefoot up the hall calling out "Nico - Did you leave the bathroom door open?" As quickly as she could, Léo snatched a pump bottle of hairspray from under the sink, popped off the plastic cap and was preparing to spray it in her mouth when Mommy grabbed it away.

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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P.S. Each month we draw a name at random from our database of customers and send them a $50 gift certificate to Chez Sophie. If you would like to be added to this promotions database, which is owned by Chez Sophie, please send us an email with your name, address, telephone number, birthday and anniversary. People on the list will also receive a gift certificate by mail or email for a free glass of champagne or dessert on their birthdays or anniversaries. (You only need to enter once to be eligible every month.)

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