Hello everyone!

On Saturday we plan to order monkfish and poach it in sousvide packages with foie gras butter. 

Monkfish is sometimes called "poor man's lobster," although frankly, these days it costs as much, if not more, than lobster. It is a meaty, sweet fish that is the perfect foil to rich sauces. Its common names include goosefish, anglerfish and allmouth. We've also heard it called "veal of the sea" and "tenderloin of the sea" because of its texture. It's one of the ugliest fish in the sea, with an enormous head which narrows into a fleshy tail, and scaleless, smooth, slippery skin. Its diet is very rich, ranging in species from flounder, skate, eels, herring, cod, and sea bass, to lobster, crab, and squid, and they have even been known to eat gulls and duck. This diet is what makes its tail meat so firm, white, and sweet. (The only other edible part of the fish is its liver).

Sousvide is a method of slowly and evenly cooking foods sealed in plastic bags in a water bath. As far as the monkfish goes, sous vide cooking can stabilize the silky texture without the added fat of poaching in butter or olive oil.

"We don't run the risk of overcooking it, and we get precisely the texture we're looking for," Dan said. The sous vide bath will allow the fish to cook at 52 degrees Celsius, held completely underwater by a curtain of small floating beads.

To Bone or Not to Bone

Today we got some really beautiful sleeve-boned poussin, which we plan to stuff with roasted leeks and sweetbreads and roast while basting with sherry. Sleeve-boning is not something that Paul will voluntarily do himself because it's very time-consuming and is of dubious value. Paul got his fill of sleeve-boning the Christmas Cheryl was pregnant with Nico, (who will turn five on Tuesday). 

That was the year our niece Annarose wanted to try "turducken," which is a turkey, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a duck, (and if you're feeling silly, stuffed with a quail.) To get all those birds one inside the other, you have to carefully remove all the bones, which makes the raw poultry into a springy sack of flesh. It takes so long for a single human to do this that it's amazing we didn't all get salmonella poisoning from eating it. And frankly, the best part of a duck is its crispy skin, and duck skin doesn't crisp when it's trapped inside of a chicken that's trapped inside of a turkey.

Cheryl, who remembers the infamous year of the turducken, asked a question about buying sleeve-boned birds in the same tone used at least 200 times a day by the Chef's two-year-old daughter: "Why?"

"What do you mean?" asked souschef Dan Felder.

"Don't you lose some of the flavor in the roasting because you don't have the marrow from the bones?" Cheryl asked.

"It enables us to highlight the best of the delicate flavor of the poussin, the best of the leeks and the best of the sweetbreads in a tidy bird package," Dan countered confidently.

Paul, who has the same traumatic associations with sleeve-boning as his wife, answered: "Really, you do lose some flavor from the bones. But you make up for it with the sweetbreads, which you couldn't do with the bones in. It allows us to do something different that we can't do with a whole poussin. If we stuff a bone-in bird, then, in order to make them available to the customer, we have to scoop them back out again. If you take the bones out of the bird first, then you have an entire unit that the customer can eat without a loss of flavor and a loss of juice."

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day went very well at Chez Sophie. The weather held and we had a full house and Paul's food was extraordinary. Joseph sold two castings from his "Expressions of Love" exhibit, which features tiny sculptures that he created to be gifts for Sophie over the 52 years of their marriage.

We'll be offering the five-course prix fixe menu that we served Thursday as an option on our à la carte menu on Friday. The first course will include your choice of beef carpaccio with braised celery hearts,  tempura quail eggs and aged balsamic; or oysters with ginger-cucumber gélée; or Thai-marinated shrimp with avocado, cilantro and melon; or mushroom and polenta fritters with garlic aioli.

The second course will be a chilled ruby soup with chicken broth, cream and pomegranate seeds.

The third course will be your choice of salmon with ginger, thyme, blood orange and quinoa; or osso bucco with fingerling potatoes and bittersweet chocolate gremolata; or quail braised with bacon and a potato/celery root gratin; or red wine risotto mille feuille with truffled parmesan crisps.

The fourth course will be a salad of shiso and pickled plums and the fifth course will be your choice of a strawberry soup and ice cream sandwich; or spicy Aztec chocolate torte or mixed berry ladyfinger parfait.

The price is $75 per person, exclusive of tax, tip or alcohol.

Joseph, who has been artist-in-residence at Chez Sophie since 1969, is taking orders for castings of the pieces in his new exhibit. The castings will cost between $300 and $3,000 depending on the piece. The castings will be done to order, so if you want to give one as a gift to your romantic love in the near future, we can create a pretty promise package for you with a photograph of the original to present as a gift for a birthday, anniversary, engagement. Castings for one of the pieces have been completed, and a series of of another piece will be finished in the next week or two.  The other pieces will take six to 12 weeks for delivery depending on the complexity of the sculpture.

To preview some of the pieces in "Expressions of Love" visit http://www.chezsophie.com/sculpt_val.html

Pink Plate Special

The Pink Plate Special this coming week will be red-wine braised lamb riblets from Elihu Farm with herbed potato gnocchi. Elihu Farm owners Mary and Bob Pratt graze tasty, tender and healthy lamb in Easton, New York, in Washington County. They win competitions not only for their meat, but also for the beauty of their fleeces.

The Pink Plate Special is a weekly prix fixe special we offer on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The Pink Plate Special is a $32 per person three-course special, including 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.

The "Thai-marinated shrimp" we served on Valentine's Day is such a brilliant recipe the guys are going to keep it on the menu into next week. The shrimp is marinated in nuoc cham, a classic mixture of lime juice, ginger, garlic, grated carrot, aged soy sauce, fish sauce (nuoc mam) and sugar. It's served with bits of avocado and tiny little balls of melon.

Cheryl asked why we are calling the dish Thai-marinated shrimp when the essential condiment comes from Vietnam.

"There's a lot of carry-over," Dan ventured. "They are border countries?"

"I don't know why we're calling it Thai," Paul admitted. "It should be Vietnamese or Saigon. We should probably change the name of it."

Jazz Brunch

The brunch menu this Saturday and Sunday will feature beef Bourguignonne ($14);  bacon and spinach quiche with side salad ($14);  sautéed shrimp in a Champagne sauce over chestnut tagliatelle ($15) and Vietnamese beef sandwich ($14). Appetizer specials include a crabcake with lemon caper mayonnaise ($16); a salad of mixed baby greens tossed in a red wine vinaigrette ($7); Rhode Island Littleneck clams steamed with white wine and herbs ($11) 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).

Cole in the House

Our artist-in-residence, jazz pianist Cole Broderick, plays the baby grand piano from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday  Cole also plays the baby grand Tuesday and Friday night (barring special events that preclude live music.) Cole, who won a Billboard Critic's Choice Award for his 4-CD set of jazz compositions: "Seasons in Saratoga," recently released his seventh CD "Chez Sophie Jazz." This is the first time he's recorded with a vocalist. (The singer is Cheryl Clark, co-owner of Chez Sophie, wife of Chef Paul,  mother of the adorable Nico and Léo.) Some of the cuts of the CD can be heard at http://www.chezsophie.com/.

Copies are for sale for $16 at Chez Sophie and through Cole's secure PayPal-friendly website at http://www.colebroderick.com/sound-7.htm

We can also mail-order the CD's for an additional $4 shipping and handling.

Skidmore Graduation

Skidmore graduation weekend has also started to book heavily. We'll be offering an elegant, four-course, $70 per person prix fixe menu,  and will be serving the Friday of Skidmore Graduation weekend from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. by reservation. On the Saturday, we will extend brunch to 3:30 pm. and start serving the prix fixe dinner at 5:30.

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 or more 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, February 25, Tuesday, February 26, Wednesday, February 27, and Thursday, February 28

$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:

Elihu Farm lamb riblets braised in red wine with herbed gnocchi

Notes on Nico and Léo:

We have a category of events that we call "not for the newsletter" and this next anecdote might well be best kept in that file. However, because Cheryl left at home the collection of napkins and slips of paper that comprises the really cute, scary or cool things that the kids have done during the week, it's going in. It's like this. Cheryl was changing clothes and heard Nico giggling behind her. She turned around and asked: "What?" Ten minutes later, she was on the phone with her husband, asking him: "Do you have any insight into why I have purple magic marker on my backside?"

Paul starting giggling just like his son. "No, really, I have no idea. Léo was playing with Nico's markers yesterday. Maybe she left one uncapped on the bed or in the couch and you sat on it. You were wearing black pants yesterday."

"Yeah, that's what I thought too," Cheryl said. "But there was nothing on my underpants and there is nothing on any of the sheets or upholstery. But my rear end has four purple circles and a big purple blob. I thought maybe you saw something happening while I slept and forgot to tell me about it."

"No, I know nothing," Paul said, clearly having trouble holding onto the cellphone while laughing. "But Léo can't really draw circles yet. And Nico's only really good at tornadoes."

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..