Hello everyone!

We'd love it if people joined us on Sunday as we participate in the Saratoga Mardi Gras, an event that benefits The Giving Circle Inc. Our little part of the event will be to serve small tastes of gumbo and Hurricane cocktails to visitors for $1 a pop. (There's a contest to see which restaurant makes the best.)

St. Georges mushroom (Calocybe gambosa) is an edible mushroom that grows mainly in woodlands.  Deriving its common name from when it first appears in the United Kingdom on Saint Georges Day, it appears in March in Italy, a warmer country. There it is known as marzolino, where it is very popular to eat.

It is considered a delicacy, especially when sautéed in butter. It was previously considered a part of the large genus Tricholoma and is still seen as T. gambosum in older texts.

We are getting a shipment of sugar snap peas  and will be using them to make a soup, among other things. Sugar snap peas are a cross between English peas and snow peas and contain the best traits of both. They have a crisp, tender shiny pod that enclose plump, round peas. Nico and Léo were given a mixture of snow peas and sugar snaps on a raw vegetable platter the other night and clearly preferred the latter. Léo, who is two-years-old, went so far as to throw the snow peas to one of the Rottweilers while stealing sugar snaps from her brother's plate.

Dover Sole

Pressing the Pasta

Souschef Dan Felder has been busily cranking the pasta press. He switched from deconstructed raviolis for the past week to a rather exotic vegetarian lasagna with beets and fresh spring ramps, topped by a steamed egg. As impressive as the hand-cranked pasta is, Dan is most excited by the egg.  He's steaming eggs in the shell in an AltoSham Combi-Therm for about 40 minutes at about 145 degrees. You would think that would result in a boiled egg, but instead, when you crack the shell, the egg slides out like a lightly poached egg, but without the tough skin that direct application of heat and water can cause. As you break the yolk with your fork, the egg gives the pasta protein, but also extra texture, richness and moisture.

Ramps, (Allium tricoccum) are a relative of leeks and are the best of the onions that grow wild. They taste like a cross between a mild onion and strong garlic, with their own distinctive musty and lingering character. The Appalachian name "ramp" comes from the British Isles where a closely related plant called A. ursinum grows wild.

One etymological version has it that the English folk name "ramson" (son of Ram) referred to the plant's habit of appearing during the sign of Aries (March 20 to April 20.) Another source traces the name to "ramsen" the plural form of an Old English word for wild garlic. The Menomini tribe simply called them 'pikwute sikakushia" or skunk plant.

Alliums are a natural antidote to winter. Native Americans used ramps to treat coughs and colds and made a poultice of ramp juice to treat bee stings. They are a good source of Vitamin C and prostaglandin A1, a fatty acid believed to be therapeutic in the treatment of hypertension. Studies have linked alliums to increases in the production of high-density lipoproteins, which are believed to help combat heart disease by reducing blood serum levels of cholesterol. 

Softshell Season Continues

Spring softshell crabs continues. 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.

Pink Plate Special

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 baked torchio pasta with Valdéon blue cheese and chives ($15); pan-seared sea scallops over frisée and bibb lettuce with and herbed lime vinaigrette ($17);  Amaretto French toast with maple-pecan butter and grilled ham steak ($15) and Jamaican-style pulled chicken with mashed potatoes and haricots verts ($16). 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 with white wine and herbs ($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/

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. (Cole is available to play special events on piano or electric keyboard both at Chez Sophie and other venues, if you like his style.

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

The pieces are for sale, and range in price from $2,000 to $35,000.

Tasting menus

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

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

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:

pork loin stuffed with Serrano ham and dried figs, served with Balsamic vinegar-braised shallots

Notes on Nico and Léo:

Moments later, as Dad was about to close the car door, Nico popped in and said, "Mom, there's something I want to ask you." He paused, scratched his head, paused some more, and then said: "Actually, you can leave right now."

On Monday, we were raising the storm windows on the house and taking the screens out of storage and vacuuming off the dust and all the dead bugs out of the window sills. The idea that the walls open to the outside is a completely new concept to two-year-old Léo, and it apparently slipped 5-year-old Nico's mind since last summer. The kids were thrilled to be able to stand outside and hang into the house through the ground floor windowsills and sit on the couch and hang their heads outside. When Cheryl started to reinstall the windowscreens, you would think their hearts were going to break. They begged to leave the house open.  Cheryl explained to them about bugs coming in if the windows aren't screened.

 "I yuv yadybugs," defiantly declared Léo, who can't make the L sound yet.

Then Nico noticed a wasp flying around the living room and shrieked. Mom, who is allergic to wasps and doesn't yet know if she's passed that trait on to the children, efficiently but rather gruesomely sucked the thing out of midair with the vacuum pipe. Nico conceded soberly and wisely: "Maybe it would be better if you covered the windows. We can still feel the fresh air and talk to each other through the screens."