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Hi, everyone.

We Parkers don't like to rush the holidays. We put up our family Christmas tree on the night before Christmas morning while sipping Champagne and eating raw oysters. But the first little hints of snow on December 1 inspired us to be festive, so Wednesday Cheryl went out to collect holiday wreaths to adorn the front of the diner and little white lights to brighten the junipers in front of the building.

We even got a seven-foot pine tree for the front foyer. It's the first Christmas tree we've put up at the restaurant since Sophie died, for reasons that don't make sense when articulated. We guess it's because it was so sad to take the 2000 Christmas tree down, knowing it was the last Christmas tree she would ever decorate. This year, little Nico is old enough to enjoy the lights and young enough not to ponder why we celebrate by adorning a dead pine tree, and that's enough for us to put the joy back into it.

We think the weather is finally frigid enough to bring out the crock pot Tuesday and begin offering little demitasse cups of mulled red wine to our customers as they come in from the cold. This treat puts some much needed moisture in the air and makes the restaurant smell like cinnamon and cloves and juniper and all the nice things that Grandma used to make when it was nasty outside.

Chef Paul loves snow and cold weather (his Southern wife is marginally less enthusiastic, but adapting) so his creative juices become a torrent when the temperature gets into the 30s or below. It always comes back to food. He watched his wife laying on her back to carefully wind Christmas lights into the tree last night, felt an odd bit of free-floating happiness and said: "That makes me want hot chocolate."

Then he and his souschef Mark Lawrence began to talk about the food they want to make in the coming week, and it was all spectacularly warm and comforting.

For one thing, he was inspired to invent a very untraditional choucroute. It's not made with sauerkraut, but with shredded fresh savoy cabbage and confit of goose. On top of that delectable pile will be a tasty chunks of tender smoked pork loin and garlicky red wine sausage.

They plan to make the ultimate Chez Sophie comfort dish for the Pink Plate Special next week. (This is even more grandiose - on a homely scale - than our incomparable cheese burgers.) MEATLOAF. That's right, fancy little Frenchie Chez Sophie makes a meatloaf that will take your heart straight back to the warmest, safest place it's ever been. The guys grind together the highest quality veal, pork and beef, stud the loaves with tart little cornichon pickles and bake them to tender, moist perfection. To keep with Chez Sophie meatloaf tradition, Paul will make mashed potatoes with gravy and green bean casserole to accompany it. This side dish is a gourmet version of the American classic with crisp haricot verts, exotic mushrooms, fresh farm cream and fried shallots.

The Pink Plate is a weekly prix fixe special we offer on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. For $28 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.

One of the best lessons Cheryl ever learned about comfort food came out of a green bean casserole. She had dreaded the first meeting of her mother and Paul's mother because they come from distinctly different peasant traditions - Pas de Calais and Arkansas. The meeting took place over Thanksgiving dinner at Cheryl and Paul's house, and the young couple obsessed (okay, Cheryl obsessed and Paul just had fun) over planning the perfect repast. We found the best organic, free-range turkey, designed a truly inventive stuffing and selected the most gorgeous French wines we could lay our hands on for this momentous meal. Cheryl's Mama saw the lightly poached, crisp haricots verts we planned to serve with a delicate shallot vinaigrette and timidly asked if it were possible to have some green beans that were cooked properly
- that it, gray beyond recognition, smothered in something greasy and topped with something fried.

Cheryl was resistant for stupid reasons. She didn't want to put it on the table in front of Paul's parents, the founders of Chez Sophie. At some point on Thanksgiving afternoon, Sophie got into her car and disappeared. She came back with Durkee's Fried Onions, Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and canned green beans and put together the casserole herself. Cheryl's Mama was tickled beyond belief, set at ease in the strange new world her daughter had chosen for herself, and comfortably allied with Paul's mother against the rigidity and lack of generosity of the young and foolish. And to top it all off, the darn thing tasted pretty good.

We're going to be featuring a dish this week that went over extraordinarily well in September, lapin fricasee. Chef Paul lightly flours and sautées these pretty rabbits, then braises them slowly in white wine and herbs with carrots and onions.) This could be on the menu either Friday or Saturday depending on when the bunnies arrive.

We're expecting tiny little tender lamb chops from Mary and Bob Pratt at Elihu Farm on Tuesday. Paul is planning a fresh mint and honey sauce with a little spicy kick and balance from a touch of vinegar.

Our cheese board will be heavy this week a variety of cheeses from across Europe. From Italy we are expecting robiolo (a small, stinky wonderful cheese). From France we will be getting Fourme d'Ambert. The latter cheese has been made since the time of the Druids and the Gauls.
It is made in the Monts de Forez of Auvergne. "Fourme" is the old French word for cheese from the Latin name "forma", and describes its cylindrical shape. Fourme d'Ambert is made with cow's milk and is one of the mildest of the blue cheeses. It's creamy with a delicate fruity flavor and mushroom overtones.

Also from France will come Pierre Robert, a triple cream cheese from Seine et Marne. Conceived by cheesemaker Robert Rouzaine, this creamy, mild cheese is made with pasteurized cow's milk, to which heavy cream is added. He named it after his son Pierre.

We're expecting a double Gloucester from Neal’s Yard Dairy, a cheese maker and purveyor in London famous for its support of English farmhouse cheeses.

Paul's monthly appearance on WAMC National Public radio has been postponed until December 17. This will give Paul and hosts Susan Arbetter and Joe Donahue a chance to talk about timely holiday celebratory foods. You can catch the 20-minute broadcast at 11:07 a.m.
by tuning to 90.3 FM, Albany; 1400 AM, Albany; WAMK, 90.9 FM, Kingston; WOSR, 91.7 FM, Middletown; WCEL, 91.9 FM, Plattsburgh; WCAN, 93.3 FM, Canajoharie; WANC, 103.9 FM, Ticonderoga; WAMQ, 105.1 FM, Great Barrington; W205AJ, 88.9 FM, Oneonta; W226AC, 93.1 FM, Rensselaer-Troy; W299AG, 107.7 FM, Newburgh; W220CE 91.9 Southington CT; or on the web at http://www.wamc.org

We have two spots left for our first Sunday cooking class of the season, on December 12. The topic will be "Fun foods to make for the holidays." No holiday feast would be complete for the Parker family without aforementioned raw oysters, so we'll practice opening some of those and show the students how to make the delicate shallot mignonette that we serve with them. We've also decided to order goose and show two different ways to cook it. We'll make a tangy relish with fresh cranberries or lingonberries and a dressing to serve alongside the bird. Paul is inventing a recipe for a quick, easy warm bread, probably made with cornmeal, and Cheryl will help him demonstrate one of the recipes for tiny holiday cookies that Sophie taught them to make.

The class starts at 11 a.m. with the "students" working together to prepare each of the dishes. We all sit down in the late afternoon to enjoy the fruits of our labors with wine. The price is $125 per person.

Each night, in the spirit of self sacrifice, Paul and Cheryl pop a bottle of bubbles with the staff to make sure that the wines we've chosen for our "Bubbles of France" wine dinners on Wednesday, December
15 and Thursday, December 16 are up to the standards of our customers.
(So far, so good.) Paul plans to serve an onion tart with salmon caviar, chicken breast braised å la bonne femme (with peas and mushrooms), an herbed velouté for the soup, filet of sole cardinale and a delicate cheesecake made with Coach Farm goat cheese.

We plan to serve the Charles de Fere Rosé N.V. Methode Champenoise, the Langlois Chateau Cremant de Loire Brut N.V. and the Domaine du Vieux Pressoir Saumur Brut Méthode Traditionelle. From one of Paul's favorite Loire Valley geniuses, we have the Domaine de la Taille Aux Loups Montlouis Pettilant, a naturel non-dosé wine with a light sparkle and a ripe, fruity style. It's 70 percent chenin blanc and 30 percent chardonnay. The star of the show will be the Roger Pouillon Brut Cuvée de Réserve. This Champagne is rich and toasty with dense flavors of fig and honey and hints of citrus. The wine rep called it "what Oregon sparkling wine would taste like if it could." The wine is 80 percent pinot noir, 15 percent chardonnay and 5 percent pinot meunier.

The cost will be $80 per person, plus tax and tip, and the dinner starts at 6:30 p.m. each night. We limit the seating to 20 people around a single banquet table. These dinners are a very good opportunity for a holiday party for small groups who want to do something very special for their friends/employees/family but don't want to have to worry about planning a menu or reserving a room.

For pictures of the past wine dinners click here.

The 50 seats available for our New Year's Eve feast are going fast. The multi course menu starts with small puffs of pâte à choux filled three different ways.
The next course will be poached oysters with caviar, followed by a vegetable terrine with beet purée that will look like it's embedded with colorful confetti when sliced. The soup will be a pistou with mussels and beans, followed by savoy cabbage leaves stuffed with goose confit. For the entree, we will offer three choices: veal loin domino with yam purée and spinach purée and exotic mushroom sauce; or mushroom risotto with black cod; or pheasant with a blood orange reduction and a Banyuls reduction.
A salad will follow the entree, composed of Belgian endive and frisée with walnuts, bleu cheese and a grape reduction. The dessert will be floating island with tropical fruit.

The party will, of course, take place on Friday, December 31, and will be as elegant and extravagant as the Parker family can make it. Each diner gets the table for the night, so you can come and leave at whatever time you want and we'll pace your meal accordingly. Some people come and leave early, some come late and stay late and some come early and stay late. Just let us know what you desire. The price is $110 person plus tax and tip. A $60 optional wine menu can be ordered (all you want to drink of about 12 fine wines and Champagnes, chosen to complement the food) or you can order from the full list or bar or teetotal. Special dietary needs can be met with advance notice.

To see photos from last year's party, click here.

Jazz pianist Cole Broderick will play his own compositions and arrangements at Chez Sophie on Tuesday starting at around 6:30 p.m.

We're planning to bake our first batch of holiday cookies and stollen this weekend to fill some mail-order shipments, so if you'd like some for yourself, please let us know before Sunday. These prettily packaged confections make great gifts for family, friends and co-workers.

To see photos of some of last year's goodies, click here. The stollen is $25 a for 1.5 pound loaf and the cookies are $25 a pound. To order stollen or holiday cookies, call Cheryl at 518-583-3538.

Between Christmas and New Year's weekend, we plan to change our menu format to a $55 per person prix fixe (December 28, 29, 30, and January 1.) This five-course menu, which will provide a good array of choices within each course, will allow us to offer especially elegant holiday fare and a lot of extras that we couldn't offer in our regular à la carte format, especially in the week before our annual two-week January vacation. This prix fixe format is the way that Sophie and Joseph operated Chez Sophie before we became a year-round bistro.

Last year, several families and businesses took advantage of a 10 percent discount we offer on gift certificates for these prix fixe nights to plan group dinners. These gift certificates, which cost $49.50 per dinner and are worth $55, are available until December 23 and make great gifts. If the certificates are not used between Christmas and New Year's Day, they revert to their face value of $49.50 and can be used at any time.

We are compiling a new database of customers with the help of a marketing company to encourage our customers to revisit us more often, especially in the cold months. In addition to the random gift certificate drawings, we will be sending participants a coupon for a free glass of Champagne or dessert to be used during the months of their birthdays or anniversaries.

If you would like to join these promotions, please send us an email with your name, address and telephone number and relevant birthdays and anniversaries. There are also sign up cards available in the restaurant. We own the database and it will not be shared with any other company.

Notes on Nicholas:
We suspect that the newsletter is a little more lucid/verbose this week. For the last few weeks we've been writing it without an "e" key because little Nico pried it off the laptop. He had to pick the most-used letter in the English language to extract. We finally found the time Sunday to go to the Apple store to get the keyboard replaced.
This is the third laptop he's de-keyed, and we think we've finally learned to keep them out of his reach until he's a little older. (We still let him type on the keyboard for the desktop unit because those keys don't come off so easily. Unfortunately he's renamed all our hard drives and files.) The 21-month-old child's technical prowess doesn't stop with computers.
He's quite adept at telephones as well, and getting taller everyday.
Some poor man in New Jersey had a scintillating conversation with our toddler Wednesday. Nico grabbed the handset off a table that just a week ago was safe from his reach and Mommy didn't realize it until she heard him shouting "Hello!" vociferously into the mouthpiece. As she tried to grab it, he ran into the nursery and shut the door behind him.
Mommy pulled it back open in time to see Nico clambering onto the couch, flipping onto his bottom and folding his hands primly in his lap. Mommy finally found the phone hidden under a pile of pillows under a table.

The poor gentleman used caller I.D. to call back a few minutes later to describe the unusual dialog he heard when he picked up the phone.
Fortunately, he was a Grandpa and found it charming.

Lest anyone think we are turning our precious only child into an egghead, let it also be known that he can pitch like Warren Spahn.
Mommy took him with her to select the Christmas tree at our favorite neighborhood farmstand, Valley Acres. The owner generously offered Nico the chance to select a shiny red apple from a bushel basket near the door. While the proprietor and Cheryl were absorbed in choosing the perfect tree, Nico selected quite a few apples and used them in an experiment with wind differential and gravity. Applesauce ensued.

Click here for this week's Pink Plate

Hope To See You Soon!
Paul, Cheryl & Joseph
at chez sophie bistro
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, and is open year-round for dinner. It is owned today by Sophie and Joseph's son, Paul Parker, and his wife, Cheryl Clark.

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