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Hello, Everyone:

The Saratoga, the downtown hotel in which we are now located, had its Grand Opening last night with hundreds of people, bands, politicians and a cannon that blew confetti (some of which were slips of paper printed with thousands of trivia facts about Saratoga) all over the lobby. The hotel, of course, has been operating throughout its $14 million dollar renovation, but this was a chance to invite Saratoga Springs in to see the transformation.

We participated in our own small way, with many of the guests coming to tour our new restaurant and sample beautiful hors d'oeuvres prepared by Paul and his staff. Cheryl, who lost her camera during our own opening night in July, borrowed a digital camera from one of the guests and snapped off a few shots of the buffet table before the masses descended.

Because he's clearly out of his mind, Paul rented a cotton candy machine to spin sugar around lamb chops, a "lamb lollipop" experiment he plans to repeat in a couple of weeks when we cook a benefit dinner for the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. (See below) Cheryl thought this combination sounded a little odd, but the guests last night gobbled them all up before she could find out how they tasted.
Actually, in true executive chef fashion, Paul came up with the idea, and then persuaded one of our servers, Erica Miller, to spin the sugar onto the lamb. She ended the night with a sugar crust in her hair and all over her face, and amazingly, didn't quit.

Erica is also a talented photographer, and she has updated the food photos and dining room pictures on our website.

Paul has lightened his fabulous pheasant dish for the warmer weather and is now braising it in white wine with fresh local chanterelle mushrooms. Chanterelles are yellow-gold, trumpet shaped mushrooms with a distinctive woodsy apricot flavor.

As a low-fat alternative to our delicious Delmonico steak, he is serving bison, (which if if is done right, tastes more like beef than beef and is better for you as well.)

For those trying low-carb diets to lose weight but are still worried about sending the cholesterol level through the roof, bison is a great beef alternative. It is juicy and flavorful, but it has far less fat and cholesterol than most other meats. A 3-1/2 ounce portion of bison has 43 mg of cholesterol, 1.8 grams of fat and 93 calories. The same portion of beef has 183 calories, 8.7 grams of fat and 55 mg of cholesterol. By comparison, 3.5 ounces of turkey has 125 calories, 3 grams of fat and 55 mg of cholesterol and chicken has 140 calories, 3 grams of fat and 73 mg of cholesterol.

On the sweet side, the kitchen folk are planning to make a pina colada sorbet tomorrow with pineapple, coconut and rum and a genoise with a plum glaze and chocolate butter cream frosting.

Genoise is one of those classically French-sounding names for a classically French-seeming recipe, but it's really the French way of saying "after Genoa" the Italian city where the cake originated. It is a light and airy sponge cake that differs from other sponge cakes because of the addition of clarified unsalted butter. The melted butter produces a more tender and flavorful sponge cake but makes it a little harder to make. The butter needs to be both warm and in liquid form in order to keep it from solidifying, and the eggs and sugar need to be warmed over a water bath to make sure the eggs reach their full volume before being deflated by the butter.

Speaking of eggs, Sophie taught Cheryl to make sorbet using egg whites and sugar whipped to meringue stiffness. Paul sometimes makes sorbet this way, but sometimes uses nothing but fruit juice and sugar syrup. If you look sorbet up in a dictionary, it will probably say it's an ice containing milk. To us that's sherbet. But we looked up sherbet and found that most people trace it to a Middle Eastern drink called charbet made of sweetened fruit juice and water.
Nowadays, sherbet can refer to a frozen mixture of sweetened fruit juice or wine and water, often mixed with milk, egg whites and/ or gelatin.

It's apparently Hawaiian fish week at Chez Sophie. Paul brought in kajiki, also known as Pacific blue marlin (Makaira nigricans ) or a`u, the Hawaiian name applied to all marlin species caught in Hawaii. Like all of the a`u caught by the ancient Hawaiians, the kajiki was feared because it could pierce a fishing canoe with its heavy bill. This species can get as large as 1,600 pounds, but the usual size of fish marketed is between 80 and 300 pounds. The kajiki is distinguished from other commonly-caught marlin species by its larger size, heavier bill, and rougher, grey skin. It is one of the fish used to make Hawaiian fish cakes and Kajiki with high fat content may be served as sashimi. When it is of especially good quality and freshness, as the fish we got Thursday, it makes and excellent grilling fish, amber, firm and tender with a mild flavor that is slighter more pronounced than ahi tuni. We hope to get more for the weekend and serve it grilled, with a vinaigrette of fines herbes.

Kajiki is also a town in Japan's Aira District, north of Kagoshima.
We have yet to figure out what this has to do with the fish. Kajiki are also among the few cold-blooded aquatic species (including tuna, other marlin, swordfish and some sharks) which can heat selected body parts above the temperature of the water. When they do this to their eyes and brain, they greatly improve their vision, and consequently their ability to catch prey.

The other fish on our menu this weekend will be opah, also known as moonfish, probably because of its large, round profile.
Lampris regius is one of the most colorful of the commercial fish species available in Hawaii. A silvery-grey upper body color turns a rosy red with white spots toward the belly. Its fins are crimson, and its large eyes are encircled with gold.
Opah don't travel in schools and so are never caught in any great quantity. A pelagic wandering species, they are usually hooked accidentally while traveling with tuna and billfish. The 60- to 200- pound fish was been viewed as a good luck symbol by old-time longline fishermen who would give it away as a gesture of goodwill rather than sell it. The opah's large-grain flesh is rich and fatty, and can be used for sashimi, grilling, broiling and occasionally for smoking.
It probably would have saved everyone some time last week if we'd been alert enough to include the date of the dinner we will be doing to benefit the Saratoga Performing Arts Center next month when we mentioned it in the newsletter.

It will be Thursday, September 7, the first day of the Saratoga Food and Wine Festival. The dinner at Chez Sophie will include at least nine wines courtesy of Palm Bay Imports. Jean-François Ey selected the wines with a Basque Frenchman's eye toward excess.
We'll start with Champagne Gosset Brut Excellence NV paired with smoked scallops on toast with trout caviar. A terrine of lobster and pork with galangal sauce will be matched with Circus by l’Ostal Cazes Viognier 2004. Lamb lollipops with grass-fed lamb from Elihu Farm will be paired with two wines from Jean-François' family estates, the Ey Single Vineyard, Grenache “Vigne las Collas” 2004 and the Ey Single Vineyard, Grenache “Vigne d’en Gaume” 2003. Braised rabbit with fall mushrooms and dumplings will go with two wines from Rhône wizard Jean-Luc Colombo, the Cairanne “Le Pavillon des Courtisanes”
2003 and the Crozes-Hermitage “Les Fees Brunes” 2003.
The finale, an apricot and plum tart with honey glaze and whipped cream will be played with a “Farandole of Roussillon Sweet Wines”
including the Ey Single Vineyard Muscat de Rivesaltes “Vigne lo Clavell” 2003, the Ey Single Vineyard Banyuls “Vigne d’en Traginer”
2000 and an old vintage Maury to be announced later.

The price for the dinner will be $120 per person and the proceeds will benefit the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Cheryl saw an early display of Halloween candy in the supermarket and reflected on the fact that very few people seem to take their kids trick-or-treating door-to-door anymore. It's not a great night for restaurants either, because parents seem obliged to take their costumed kids from store to store in the mall begging for candy. So we had a thought: why not have a Halloween party at Chez Sophie?
We'll set the kids up in the upper dining room by the lounge with snacks and games, give prizes away for the best costumes, and meanwhile, the Mommies and Daddies can take two steps down to the lower dining room, sit by the fireplace and have a real meal. We can decorate the courtyard with jack-o-lanterns and glow-in-the dark ghouls, and everybody's happy, right?

The party will start at 5 p.m. and go to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 31. Admission for children will be $5 per kid, which includes snacks, games and prizes. This could turn out to be a pretty big thing, so if you want to have dinner while your kids have fun, you should probably reserve a table on the lower level.

Jazz pianist Cole Broderick is playing the baby grand in our lounge every night during track season and during Sunday brunch. The hotel has also hired him to play keyboard in the lobby on Fridays during the cocktail hour. Once the track closes, he'll play Tuesdays and Fridays and during Sunday brunch, as well as during parties and special events.

Notes on Nico and Léo: When your three-year-old says "Mommy, there's a snake in the hallway!" you shouldn't necessarily assume he has an over active imagination. It's not as if there's never been a snake inside our vaguely rustic farmhouse. The last time it was in the basement, and Cheryl was rooting around in a wooden crate full of computer cables and Christmas tree lights when one of them started to move.

This time, Nico was standing on the couch, trying to decide whether to scream or catch the snake and play with it. Mommy walked into the hall saw no snake, but saw a black ribbon from a gift lying on the carpet in the foyer at the end of the hall.

"Are you sure you saw a snake, honey? Are you sure it wasn't this ribbon?"
"Well," he said dubiously. "It was moving."
So Mommy got a broom and dutifully prodded the corners, and under the furniture and behind the shoes in the foyer, and there was no snake.
So she assured Nico everything was fine, and Nico went back into the living room to look at picture books and Cheryl went out to sweep the porch, since the broom was in her hands, anyway.

Sure enough, as she was coming back in, a snake slithered across the entry carpet. She grabbed a pair of kitchen tongs and a bucket and caught the darned thing and triumphantly presented it to her son.
"You were right, baby!" she said. "There was a snake!" Nico and Cheryl ran outside with the bucket to set the snake free. Of course it jumped out of the bucket on the porch and ran right back into the house.

Thursday morning Léo said "Mama." Not mamamamamamamama, but definitely "Mama." She's cutting more teeth at night and begins to scream inconsolably about 1:30 a.m. After an hour or two she generally exhausts herself and sleeps. That is, until her big brother sneaks out of bed and vaults on top of her, waking her suddenly to the miseries of painful gums.

The Pink Plate Special
has gone on summer vacation. It will return, as it does each year, after Labor Day.

We hope to see you soon,

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..

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P.S. Each month we draw a name at random from our database of customers and send them a $50 gift certificate to Chez Sophie. If you would like to be added to this promotions database, which is owned by Chez Sophie, please send us an email with your name, address, telephone number, birthday and anniversary. People on the list will also receive a gift certificate by mail or email for a free glass of champagne or dessert on their birthdays or anniversaries. (You only need to enter once to be eligible every month.)