Hello, everyone.

Chef Paul met his wife, Cheryl, 21 years ago, when she was a mere 19.
Coming from the deep, dark poor part of Arkansas, she was not anxious to marry prematurely, before she'd established herself professionally and personally. Being perfect soulmates, the couple lived as closely at the beginning as they do today, after 11 years of marriage and two beautiful children.

For the first 10 unmarried years, the only real problems were semantic. What do you call your soulmate after 7 or 9 years of a shared life? "Girlfriend" and "boyfriend" seem a bit thin for describing such a deep, albeit, not legally formalized, arrangement.
"Lover" seems to tell too much. "Partner" sounds a bit business-like.
They tried out "concubine" and "consort" for giggles, but soon tired of explaining their sense of humor.

During this deeply committed, yet illegal period, Cheryl developed a fascination for how people described their personal ties. Her favorite was a French term, "mariage de la main gauche" or marriage of the left hand, a charming French way of describing a slightly scandalous, not legally sanctioned union.

This has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that Paul has decided to call the Pink Plate Special this coming week Mariage de Chaussons, and Cheryl drew the random connection. Chaussons is a fancy French word for a turnover. This idea started with an empanada, a Spanish and South American pastry stuffed with meat, seafood, vegetables or sweet stuff. The "marriage" part is the fact that each plate will feature two distinctly different, and yet complimentary pies. The first will be stuffed with pork, prunes and almonds; the second will be filled with potatoes, fresh spring ramps and truffle oil.

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. This week, the Pink Plate will be available Monday, May, 14, Wednesday, May 16 and Thursday, May 17. We will be closed from 6 to 10 p.m. Tuesday for a private party, but will still be serving breakfast and lunch.

Speaking of borrowed ideas, people have been loving the elk with a mango sambal that Paul put on the menu last week so much that he's keeping it on for another week. He volunteered that the recipe was inspired by Marcus Samuelsson, the hot young New York chef who started Aquavit. An Ethiopian adopted by Swedish parents and raised in Sweden, Samuelsson has enchanted Paul with his cookbook: "The Soul of a New Cuisine."

"It combines so many items that I've already fallen in love with,"
Paul said. "It's so natural and familiar in a lot of ways, and very exciting at the same time."

It is highly unlikely that we'll be able to fit any more people in for Mother's Day brunch this Sunday. We have 200 reservations and about 100 people on the waiting list and today, the only thing we had cancellations on were a couple of tables for two. It's always possible that something last minute could come up if a large reservation fails to show up, freeing up a block of tables. But we'd like to note that dinner is just as delicious on Mother's Day as brunch is, so if you're looking for a special Chez Sophie treat for Mom and didn't get in on brunch, we're likely to be able to fit you in from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

We're planning to serve halibut this weekend with a wild ramp and morel mushroom nage. "Nage" is a term that means bath, so the delicate fish is bathed in fish stock with a tiny dash of cream.
"It's a wonderful, loose, delicate sauce flavored intensely with the garlicky ramps and black morels from the West Coast that are amazing," Chef Paul said. Morels (Morchella conica) belong to the same fungus family as truffles. The edible mushrooms have a distinctive, honeycombed cap that can be shorter than an inch and as tall as 4 inches. They have a strong, woody earthy, smoky flavor.

Morels will also feature in a pork loin dish we will be featuring this weekend. The pork loin will be served with a morel spiked polenta and a tomato marmalade. We'll also be making veal schnitzel with a lemon-scented veal reduction and braised cippoline onions.

Strange things happen during Skidmore Graduation weekend, which this year is May 18 and 19th. Sometimes people who have nothing to do with Skidmore cancel their reservations when they hear that the huge family groups will be in town. Those who have done it before and survived actually strive to book Chez Sophie on a Skidmore weekend, because they know the prix fixe menu is going to be a great value and a lot of fun. It's four courses for $70 a person, with a great variety of choices in each category. We still have a smaller tables available throughout the Friday and Saturday evening, although finding room for larger groups has become very difficult at this point.

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 or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $75 per person, 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: $50 to $200, depending on the number of courses and the wines
selected; available for two to 75 guests. Call Cheryl to make
arrangements 518.583.3538

The Pink Plate Special
offered Monday, May, 14, Wednesday, May 16 and Thursday, May 17.
(We will be closed from 6 to 10 p.m. Tuesday for a private party.)

$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:
Mariage de Chaussons
(two turnovers, one stuffed with pork, prunes and almonds; the other filled with potatoes, fresh spring ramps and truffle oil)

Notes on Nico and Léo: Nico is crazy for dinosaurs and is constantly studying which dinosaurs are meat-eaters and which are plant-eaters and which resemble amphibians and which are more like birds. He can be entertained for hours with dinosaur story books, dinosaur encyclopedias and dinosaur websites. His Nanny took him to the library and introduced him to a line of DVDs where all the characters are dinosaurs, some children and some adults. It seemed harmless enough, until our previously erudite and well-spoken four-year-old began to mimic one of the characters, a baby dinosaur that talks in baby gibberish - the kind of infantile phrasing that we've never allowed in our house.
"Me want cocoa milk," Nico now says poutily. "Me want play outside.
Me want hug!"
It's driving his mother, who took great pride in her son's previously precocious elocution, insane. We were standing in line at P.J.'s Barbecue with Daddy and Léo and Nico was dancing around demanding:
"Me want french fries. Me want hamburger!"
"Nico," his mother said archly. "You know you're not going to get anything you want from me if you don't ask properly and politely.
What is the correct pronoun to begin those sentences with?"
Nico sighed. "I. I want french fries." He thought about it some more.
"May I have french fries, please?"
"That's much better," Cheryl said with relief.
The woman ahead of us turned around and said: "Impressive. Home schooled?"
"Not exactly," Cheryl said. "He's only four, so he's not in school yet anyway. I'm just trying to counteract the effects of this stupid dinosaur video he checked out from the library that has him talking like a baby. He never did that when he WAS a baby."
"The Land Before Time?" the woman asked knowledgeably. "I know exactly what you are talking about. They should burn that thing."
(Paul suspects Cheryl is making too much of this, and elongating the period that Nico will think it's amusing by paying so much attention to it. She knows he's right, but can't seem to stop herself from rampant correction, and even making fun of the baby dinosaur character as someone who is stupid and will never be taken seriously.
Even the four-year-old can tell that Mommy's sailed right over the top.)

Léo has reached that dangerous one-year-old stage where, because she only uses 20 or so single-syllable words, one thinks she can't understand yet. Nico had climbed up into the pantry cabinet, snagged some marshmallows and graham crackers and asked: "Where's that bar of chocolate that was in here? I want to make everyone smores for dinner."
"We are not having smores for dinner, silly man," his Mom said.
"We're having vegetables and fruits and nutritious foods. Put those marshmallows away before your sister sees them and starts whining."
At which point, Léo grabbed the marshmallows, ran from the room and hid them under a couch pillow. It took her brother 15 minutes to find them while she sat uncharacteristically still with her hands folded in her lap, absolutely refusing to clue him in.

When we all sat down at the table, Cheryl asked Nico to tell her which items on his plate were starches, which were proteins and which had vitamin A and vitamin C. He did a reasonably good job, so Mommy asked, "What's your favorite thing on the plate?"
He pointed and mumbled around a mouthful, "The meat!"
"My little carnivore," Mommy mused.
"Remember last year when we went to the carnivore, and I won a prize?" he asked.

Mommy was loading the dishwasher when Nico walked up and said
excitedly: "Mommy this magazine has a toy that emulates a dinosaur!"
"Nico!" Mommy said with a giggle. "That's a very good word."
"Why is that funny?" he asked with interest. "Which word?"
"Emulates. It's a fairly obscure, elegant word with a very specific meaning, and you used it correctly in a sentence."
"That's great, Mommy," Nico said, patting her on the leg. "What does emulates mean?"

The Parker family
at Chez Sophie
518.583.3538