Hello, everyone.

We suspect it all started when our daytime serving captain, Billy Thompson, called from Ohio, where he is taking a week's vacation to visit his mother.
"There's a huge African population here, from Somalia and Ethiopia and other nations, and the supermarkets are full of really interesting food," he told Cheryl. "Tell Paul and Mark if they want spices from Africa, call me with a list, and I'll bring back whatever I can find."

Cheryl promptly delivered this message and the boys' eyes lit up like they'd been given new 10-speed bikes for their birthdays. They yanked out a bunch of African cookbooks and began to compile their list. In the process, they discovered they had an awful lot of spices at hand already, and decided that this first week of truly spring-like weather would be a good time to heat things up.

Consequently, one of the special dishes this week will be steak au cent poivres (which Paul quips is "a Chinese phrase which means 'as many as I want.'") This is a pepper steak covered not just with black peppercorns, but with a variety of peppers including Javanese long blacks, grains of paradise, Szechuan peppercorns, tellicherry, allspice, green peppercorns, cubeb peppercorns, sarawak and pink peppercorns.

"Will it be spicy?" Cheryl asked.
"Not so much as you might think," Paul said. "It will have the same quantity of pepper as you normally might use, but these are wildly different peppercorns so it will have a lot of really different flavors. It will be spicy like a steak au poivre..."

"but only better," Souschef Mark Graham finished for him.

We can't wait to see what they come up with when Billy gets back with the new spices on Tuesday.
Until then, Chef Paul has been plotting a number of fabulous food intrigues.

We will be serving rabbit with wine cap mushrooms, a fungus first brought over to France to be grown in home gardens. It began spreading as a "garden escape" and has been spotted in places as diverse as the Munster Valley, Strasbourg and Brognard, thriving particularly in the mulch of garden beds in public places and beside roadways. The mushrooms love to grow in cultivated or disturbed areas.

Their caps are wine-coloured when young, fading to tan or yellowish- brown as they mature. When fully mature, the cap can easily be 6 inches wide or more. The gills underneath the cap are white when the mushrooms are young, turning to purplish-grey then black as the mushroom ages.

We'll also be offering a decadent veal dish with King oyster mushrooms. Paul plans to sauté veal loin and separately sauté veal kidneys. The kidney pan will be deglazed with Cognac, and cream will be added to finish the sauce. When pressed for a name for the dish to put on the menu Paul called it Veal Nikolai. Cheryl asked why and Paul said his son Nicholas was standing nearby when he was asked the question and our server Thomas, who was taking notes to reprint last night's menu, didn't ask for a spelling.

King oyster mushrooms will also feature in the halibut crepinette we will be serving this weekend.

We're going to take the halibut, wrap it in Serrano ham with the King oyster mushrooms and a little bit of caul fat to hold it together, and roast it softly in the oven. It will be served with a beurre blanc.
"The goal is to not over temp the Serrano ham," Paul said. "The Serrano is going to be a little like bacon wrapped around the fish, but with a more intense flavor, Serrano ham being my favorite ham ever, maybe. The thing is, the texture contrast between the mushrooms and the halibut and the Serrano should be kind of extraordinary."

King oyster mushrooms have a large spectacular shape, being more pearly, meaty stem than soft tan head. It is native to Mediterranean regions of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, but also grown in parts of Asia. According to Wikipedia, in Chinese it is called xìng bào gu (???, literally "almond abalone mushroom"), cì qín gu (???, lit. "stab celery mushroom"), or ????. In Japanese, it is called eringi (katakana: ????).

The Pink Plate will be mac and cheese with ham, served with tomato confit with plums. "How can you go wrong with macaroni and cheese?"
Mark asked as he cooked up a tasty batch of mac and cheese for staff meal Thursday night.
"I'm sorry," Paul queried. "Did you say how can you go wrong with matrimony and cheese?"
"We decided to do something a little less traditional for the wedding," Mark riffed. "Instead of cake we're having a cheese display... a nice Berkshire bleu, a little Mimolette..."

By the way, if you're really tired and looking for newsletter fodder and you Google the phrase "matrimonial cheese," nothing of interest happens.

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.

They'll also be serving a diptych of pheasant. Half the dish will be a miniature pheasant pot pie in port and cream, and the other half will be pheasant breast seared with olive oil and sea salt.

The sun has started to shine enough for the farmers with greenhouses to start bringing in more than microgreens and whispers of promise.
Sandy Sanford of Little Field Farm in Argyle has been bringing us magically fresh baskets of fabulous decorative greens and flowers and super-fresh salad mixings.

On Thursday we our first delivery since December of tiny, tender baby lettuces from Sunset Hill Farm, and if the sun stays out this week, we're promised that we could see twice-a-week deliveries from now through the summer. Sunset Hill farmers Will and Debbie Sherman eschew pesticides and extend the natural growing season in Newport, New York, through the use of greenhouses and hydroponics.

Kilpatrick Farm brought a rainbow of mixed carrots, mixed beets and fresh spinach. There are yellow carrots, orange carrots and white carrots that are green right in the center and very sweet and carroty. The beet selection includes golden, Chioggia and white beets (if they have some of each when they pick for deliveries.) Kilpatrick Family Farm was started in 2001 by Michael and Philip N.
Kilpatrick in Middle Granville, New York. With organic certification, they grow greens, tomatoes, root crops and greenhouse cucumbers and cole crops.

Sweetbread alert: Paul plans to put his famous sweetbreads on the menu tonight. There are a number of people on a "sweetbreads call list" who are waiting for word that Paul will be serving this dish, and our faithful night host Adam tried to reach all of them this week to give them time to plan before this weekend.

Our Sunday Jazz brunch with pianist Cole Broderick will feature tempura duck roll with chipotle sauce ($14); chicken mash with poached eggs ($13); braised lamb shanks with baby root vegetables over polenta ($15); and tomato-crab risotto ($14). Appetizer specials include steamed Rhode Island Littleneck clams ($12); mussels marinière ($10), a salad of mixed baby greens tossed in a red wine vinaigrette ($7) and soup of the day ($8).

The brunch specials run from 10 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 ($9 to $11); pancakes du jour ($9); 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).
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Tango night this month will be Wednesday, April 25 at 9 p.m. We'll roll up the carpet in front of the fireplace to bare the soul of our wooden dance floor and Diane Lachtrupp and Johnny Martinez will offer free starter lessons for those who'd like to join the more experienced dancers on the floor. (You can also just have a cocktail and watch the dancers if you're shy.)

Welcome to the world, Alejandro Gaél Gonzalez Eastman (a.k.a Jano) the new son of our former pastry chef Bronwen Eastman de Gonzalez. He was born April 11 at 1:17 p.m. and weighed 9 lbs 20 inches. There are pictures of this ridiculously beautiful family at http://www.flickr.com/gp/7809444@N02/Yfb61K

Notes on Nico and Léo:
Cheryl was watching a movie about dinosaurs with the children when she realized Léo needed a diaper change. Nico kept running into the bathroom to excitedly tell his Mom and sister everything that was happening in the movie, then running back to see more. On his third trip in, he shrieked, "Mommy the good dinosaurs used their voices and pounded their tails and they knocked the carnosaurs off the rocks!"
"What happened to the carnosaurs, Nico?"
"They died," he said matter of factly.
"Oh!" Mom exclaimed, a little concerned that she had left him watching an apparently violent movie all by himself.
"What's wrong with that, Mommy?" Nico asked.
"Well, were the carnosaurs bad dinosaurs?" she asked tentatively.
"Of course," he said. "They're meat eaters."
"Well, honey," she ventured. "You eat meat."
"But I eat if off a plate!" he said.

Last night, he said "When I grow up, I'm going to be in charge of a different kind of restaurant. We're going to serve dogs."
"What will you cook for the dogs?" his Mom asked innocently.
"No, Mommy, we going to serve the dogs to the customers. And worms.
And eggs. And poop."
"That sounds like a great marketing plan, dear. You'll be rich."

The Pink Plate Special
offered Monday, April 23, Tuesday, April 24, Wednesday, April 25, and Thursday, April 26.

$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:
mac and cheese with ham, served with tomato confit with plums.

The Parker family
at Chez Sophie
518.583.3538