Hello everyone!
We were tasting rosé wines the other afternoon, a little early in the day for Cheryl to enjoy the sensation of wine in her mouth (that time of day does not exist for her oenophile chef/husband.) Cheryl grudgingly described one of the wines as "not having so much of that rosé thing which sometimes bugs me."
"What thing?" asked the unsuspecting wine saleswoman.
'Oh, rotting fruit in a hot plastic garbage can."
Which brings us to sensations that can be peeves for one man and pleasures for another. "I think what you're talking about is what I like about rosés," Paul ventured, not really sure what Cheryl was on about. He apparently thought about it for a full day, because the next day a wine salesman came to Cheryl at the host stand and said Paul wanted her to come into the kitchen because he was tasting a rosé and the two of them had laid a bet about how Cheryl would describe it. Too much information invalidated the bet, but Cheryl tasted the rosé and said: "It's there a little bit, but only in the back of the mouth. The front is all raspberry soda pop or something."
The wine rep offered: "Watermelon Jolly Ranchers?"
"Yep, that's it," Cheryl said. "So what's the technical term for that other thing I'm describing?"
Paul said: "Rotting fruit in a hot plastic garbage can."
"No, really," Cheryl said. "It's like sourness, but not acidity." Paul claimed not to know the difference between sourness and acidity, while his wife maintains there's a huge difference.
"You have no idea the number of times someone has told me a wine is sour when what they are talking about it tannins," Paul sighed to the rep.
"You know me better than that," Cheryl countered calmly. "Maybe 'fruity' is what I'm thinking of, but there are lots of fruity wines that don't have that kind of sourness. Maybe 'overripe' is it, but people generally mean something bad when they say overripe, and I suspect what is not appealing to me about certain rosés is not a bad thing, but something that other people really like."
Later on, Cheryl said: "Paul, could it be sour butter? Is it possible that butteriness is what's turning me off?"
"Sure," Paul said. "Especially because those wines had malolactic fermentation, and that's probably what bugs you about a lot of the chardonnays that you don't like. You don't much like yogurt either."
The same kind of thing happened Wednesday night when a customer talked himself into a very elegant, still young (eight-year-old) St. Joseph, even though Cheryl was convinced that what he really wanted was something with a little smoky, saddle leathery mourvedre kick like a Coudoulet de Beaucastel or a Provençal Bandol. He was more wooed by the words "long" and "elegant" than the words "tar and "Band-Aids." But his reaction to the (more expensive) St. Joseph was, "it's a little tart and thin," which wasn't exactly accurate, but confirmed Cheryl's original opinion of what would have made him happy.
The next day, he came back in (he was a guest of the hotel). He asked Cheryl if she was familiar with the term "brett".
"The Coudoulet de Beaucastel is actually the only wine I've ever had where I could identify the brett," he said, adding: "I liked it."
Brett is short for brettanomyces, a yeast that is present throughout the Beaucastel wineries and may impart a savage, animal, organic quality to the wines. This is a matter for debate, because some people feel these qualities in the Beaucastel wines can be chalked up to the high levels of mourvedre the brothers Perrin use to make the wines. The issue is further muddied by the fact that the brothers subject the grape must to heat as it enters the winery. This purportedly prevents oxidation, improves the extraction of anthrocyanins from the grape skins (which impart color and flavor and slow fermentation without the addition of sulphur.) While the Perrins consistently turn out some of the best wines in the Rhone, they drive purists crazy because the long-established tradition is that great wines are made through careful vineyard management and minimal intervention in the cellar.
At low levels, most winemakers agree that the presence of brettanomyces compounds create positive effects in the wine, contributing to complexity. Some Chateaus, such as Musar and Beaucastel, rely on naturally occuring brett to lend distinctive characteristics to their wines. Other people are hyper sensitive to brett characteristics and find even a trace sickening. In our restaurant, we have had glorious, expensive bottles of Beaucastel and Musar sent back, with the diners angrily insisting that we are trying to pass off "corked" wine on them (even though brettanomyces was thoroughly explained before the foil was cut.)
Others find the flavors fascinating. Chacun à son goût.
Stupid Chef Tricks
The kids in the kitchen are expecting to get a couple of naturally occurring compounds to play with tomorrow. Paul thinks of this as a play date in which stupid chef tricks will be performed. One is sodium alginate, a sodium salt of alginic acid extracted from the cell walls of brown algae. It's used in food to increase viscosity and density and used to make indigestion tablets and dental impressions.
Souschef Dan Felder wants to try to use it to make a membrane, like that of an egg yolk, and enclose within it fresh roasted quince to seal in the aroma and flavor. If it works, it will be served with pheasant. Paul suggested making perfect spheres of foie gras fat to see if they will bounce. More frighteningly, they plan to experiment with liquid nitrogen. Right now, they have nothing more ambitious in mind than super cooling the bottom of a metal bowl to see if they can pop popcorn with cold rather than heat. We'll keep you posted. Paul promises not to blow up anything valuable.
Vegemo
The vegetarian entree for the past couple days, referred to as the "vegemo" in the kitchen, has been so popular we're going to carry it through the weekend. It's gnocchi made with Queso de Valdeon blue cheese, served with gingered carrots, maitake mushrooms and asparagus. It's light and fluffy with a sharpness from both the cheese and the sauce.
Softshell Season Starts
The first of the spring softshell crabs arrived this week, earlier than usual thanks to global warming. Once the harvest starts, it moves up the coast each week as the weather turns warmer until the molting season is over. We will ask for at least two dozen each day, but we don't always get them. It seems no matter how slow it is, we sell out each day. If you're really jonesing for softshells, reserve them when you make your reservation.
Local lettuce
Another sign of spring: Sunset Hill Farm will be delivering fresh baby salad greens as well as braising mix today. Newport, New York, farmers Will and Debbie Sherman grow the greens hydroponically, without pesticides, in greenhouses. (During the local field green season, we supplement their mesclun with unusual lettuces and sprouts from nearby organic farmers and neighborhood gardeners.) The lettuces are so good that they deserve to be shown off in all their fresh, perfect glory, dressed lightly with a vinaigrette we make ourselves and adorned with little more than a sprinkle of fresh parsley.
Pink Plate Special
The Pink Plate Special this week will be lamb meatballs in broth, kind of a cross between navarin printanier and matzoh ball soup. "You could call it agnello in brodo in Italian, but the concept is to do very light and delicate lamb meatballs with lamb from Elihu Farm, with spring vegetables and broth," Paul said.
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.
Weekend Jazz Brunch
The brunch menu this Saturday and Sunday will feature Parmesan-crusted chicken breast with roasted beets, frisée and Coach Farm goat cheese ($16); torchio pasta with smoked mushrooms and chorizo ($16); pan-roasted, center-cut pork chop with Thai peanut sauce and celery-root mashed potatoes ($15) and pan-roasted swordfish with roasted corn-black bean salsa and fried green plaintains ($17). Appetizer specials include escargots de Bourgogne ($11); a salad of mixed baby greens tossed in a red wine vinaigrette ($7); Rhode Island Littleneck clams steamed in white wine ($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).
Cole in the House
Cole plays the baby grand piano from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday during brunch and on Tuesday and Friday night (barring special events that preclude live music.) He also comes in on nights he is not normally scheduled, such as Thursdays and Saturday nights, if he feels like it. 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/.
We can also mail-order the CD's for an additional $4 shipping and handling.
Mother's Day Brunch
On Sunday May 11, we will offer a Mother's Day brunch buffet-style brunch with a made-to-order omelette station, as well as a raw bar, a waffle station, a salad and vegetable station, desserts, and a carving station (for Easter we did Elihu Farm leg of lamb, baked cured ham and stuffed veal loin roulade. Specifics of May's extravaganza to be announced.)
We will be requiring a credit card to confirm the reservations, with a 24-hour no-penalty cancellation grace period. (After that, it's a $10 per head penalty.)
Admission is $35 for adults and $18 for children under 12, exclusive of beverage, tax and gratuity. A service charge of 20 percent will be applied to parties of 6 or more. We will begin seating at 10:30 a.m. and accept reservations each half hour until 3 p.m. Breakfast will be served from 7 to 9:30 a.m. and dinner seatings will begin at 5:30 p.m. with our normal à la carte dinner menu.
Skidmore/Albany Law Graduation
Skidmore graduation weekend is booking heavily. We'll be offering an elegant, four-course, $70 per person prix fixe menu, and will be serving dinner the Friday (May 16) of Skidmore Graduation weekend from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. by reservation. On Saturday, May 17, we will extend brunch to 3:30 pm. and start serving the prix fixe dinner at 5:30. We've also taken lunch reservations until 2:15 p.m. on Friday, May 16, to accommodate people driving up from graduation ceremonies at the Albany Law School Graduation and several other local schools.
Artist in residence Joseph C. Parker
This may be the last week to see Joseph's "Expressions of Love" exhibit, which features tiny sculptures that he created to be gifts for his late first wife, Sophie, over the 52 years of their marriage. He is planning to bring in a new set of scultpures very soon and take the little love sculptures back to his gallery in Hadley. To see photos, visit http://www.chezsophie.com/sculpt_val.html
The Chef's Choice seven-course tasting menu is 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, April 14, Tuesday, April 15, Wednesday, April 16, and Thursday, April 17
$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:
lamb meatballs from Elihu Farm with spring vegetables and a light broth
Notes on Nico and Léo:
Nico went for his pre-kindergarten evaluation and registration Tuesday and Cheryl is trying to recover from the experience without psychological counseling. She had been well-prepped by other mothers with children in a similar circumstance (no daycare, no preschool) that Nico would not perform the way the evaluators expected him to and his test results would be well short of the 100 percent range. Mom, whose self-driven academic overachievement got her out of poverty-stricken backwoods Arkansas, is managing not to obsess within earshot of the children, but she's still having a hard time resisting the rather ridiculous impulse to find a tutor who knows the ways of the system to work with Nico all summer so he's "ready" for kindergarten. Paul, whose parents encouraged him to apply himself to whatever he liked (rather than those specific things that would gain him advantage and recognition within the academic system) is cheerfully hoping that the enjoyable, supportive approach of his childhood and the desperately goal-oriented nature of his wife's can be melded to encourage Nico to excel without turning him into a neurotic mess. (And this is only kindergarten.)
Part of the problem is that what Cheryl and Paul have been teaching the boy was not informed by what he would actually be tested on. Part of it is that the kid has a weird sense of humor and isn't used to being confined to a chair and expected to perform. He may have also just blanked out on his first "test." We've taught him to copy the alphabet, but we started with capital letters. The testers started with lowercase, and when he copied the first three lowercase letters as capitals, they disqualified that portion of the test, deducting 26 points. He got a point taken off for not knowing his own telephone number. We discovered last week when he was getting a physical at the doctor's office, he thinks that "What is your phone number?" is an hysterically funny question. We don't have a landline phone at home (to discourage telemarketing interruptions,) but Cheryl and Paul and the Nanny each have cellphones. Nico's response, when asked the question the right way, is: "I don't have a phone. I'm just a kid." Having been asked the question twice in a week, however, he did ask his mother on the way home from the test: "When I'm older, do you think I could have a real phone of my own? I might want to talk to my friends when I make some."
He also found the questions rather boring and tried to lighten up the experience by giving incorrect responses with a wink and a nod. According to the evaluator's log, Nico is unable to correctly identify any part of of his body other than his heels. He counted to 13, but then started throwing random numbers in, a game he plays at home to make sure his Mom is listening. He also refused to identify shapes he has known perfectly well since he was 2 or 3. He mentioned to his mother diffidently a few hours after the test that "Those teachers asked too many questions that didn't fit with the context of the game." He asked why so much of the test had to be administered while he was sitting still. The evaluator noted dryly: "He has lots of energy."
He also got demerits because he knows how to write his nickname, Nico, but we haven't bothered to teach him to write Nicholas Charles Parker yet, because it just seems like a lot of letters. We'll know better when poor Léocadie Madeleine Parker is in the same boat in three years.
Nico to Paul: "Daddy, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't leave those scissors where I can reach them."
