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Hello, everyone.

The Pink Plate Special is back. Chef Paul plans to kick off the weekly fall and winter tradition with brined and roasted pork loin stuffed with polenta loaded with roasted corn and a corn-stock-based sauce made with sage.

The word polenta is borrowed into English from Italian, but the dish (under various names) is popular in Italian, Savoyard, Swiss, Austrian, Croatian, Cuban, Hungarian, Slovenian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Corsican, Argentine, Uruguayan, Brazilian, Peruvian, Venezuelan, and Mexican cuisines. Early forms of polenta in Roman times were made with farro or chestnut flour and were called puls or pulmentum in Latin (which translates roughly as gruel or porridge). Once a bland and common peasant food, polenta has recently enjoyed gourmet appeal.

"It's kind of an experiment, and I think it's going to be really good," Paul promised. "The Pink Plate is going to be pork with corn three ways. Really four ways, if you count the corn that went into the pig to make it what it is."

The Pink Plate is a weekly prix fixe special we offer on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. For $32 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.

We did a tart for a benefit dinner we gave for the Saratoga Food and Wine Festival Thursday night that Paul likes so much he wants to put it on the regular menu. Made with French butter pears, the tart is an upscale version of a tart tatin in individual portions.
A tart tatin, traditionally, is a pie made with fruit and caramel arranged in a pan, then covered with pastry dough. The pan is baked in the oven until the crust browns, then the pie is turned out of the pan onto a plate.

"So we did the pears as if they were going into a tart tatin and then surrounded them with puff pastry," Paul said. "I tried to retain some of the country style by doing an irregular crust , but it still is very beautiful and elegant. It's a caramel pear tart, but it's not an upside down pie."

French butter pears are very similar into appearance to Bartlett pears. They are very juicy, and have a sweet, succulent flavor containing a hint of lemon.

The last day of the Saratoga Food and Wine Festival, which benefits the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, is Saturday. The final event is a Grand Tasting of food and wine, during which Cheryl and Paul will join 25 local restaurants and 200 wineries from across the world to serve up delicious delicacies. We plan to offer escargots in puff pastry to the assembled crowds.
For ticket information visit http://www.spac.org/spac-calendar/spac-
event-calendar-view-detail.asp?varEventID=26 or call 518.587.3330.

We had such a nice time with Olivier Masmondet, the Director of Sales and Maitre Sommelier de France of Louis Jadot who came to Thursday night's wine dinner, that we tentatively planned to do another wine dinner with him on Friday, November 9. Stay tuned for further details.

Paul is retooling the lunch menu to add some fun new dishes. We'll change over the menu on Monday. Among the new dishes are a crab salad with avocado, daikon radish, celery and red pepper with yuzu vinaigrette; a steak salad with raw onion, sweet and sour dressing, fruit and greens; a plat jardinier: braised leeks, corn & tomato salad, purée of flageolets with onion and fingerling homefries; Cubano sandwich with brined and roasted pork loin, ham, Swiss, Dijon and pickle on a ciabatta roll; torchio pasta “Corsican style” with chick peas, onions, garlic and sweet sausage served with sautéed broccoli rabe; Cornish hen à la bonne femme, braised with peas, mushrooms and pearl onions in stock and white wine with tarragon and thyme; and roasted duck legs with beans.

We'll be serving lean, buttery axis venison this weekend, doing to it "as little as possible."
"God, the stuff is so flipping good," Paul said. "It's been a while since I ordered from Broken Arrow Ranch, and I'd forgotten how good their stuff is. It leaves me speechless. I'm reduced to goofiness.
Other than sika venison, it's the best tasting red meat on the planet. Well, I dunno, I haven't tried everything yet."

He's got it marinating in olive oil with garlic, juniper berries, peppercorns, thyme and rosemary, and he plans to grill and serve it with an earthy combination of mushrooms and beets and other vegetables. He considered an intricate sauce, but he's tempted to just "leave it to be itself."

Axis, also known as chital or spotted Indian deer, were imported to the Texas Hill Country from India and Nepal in the 1930s. The free- ranging herds have thrived, allowing for limited humane harvesting to control populations. Dubbed the "veal of venison," Axis deer meat is buttery tender and mildly flavored, and yet is low fat (less than 3
percent.) It has not been treated with antibiotics or hormones and is lower in cholesterol than chicken, with a third of the calories of beef.
The introduced breed has flourished so rampantly that back in 1988 a Texas Parks and Wildlife survey estimated 39,040 Axis deer were ranging free in Texas. They can also be found now in Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Michigan, California, Hawaii, Florida and zoos in most states.
Per ounce, an uncooked Axis steak has .06 grams of fat, 26 calories, and 13.9 mg cholesterol. By comparison, skinless chicken has .88 grams of fat, 34 calories, and 20.0 mg cholesterol. Lean beef has
1.76 grams of fat, 41 calories, and 16.86 mg cholesterol.

Now that the weather is cool (well not today, but intermittently) Paul has been playing with the port wine reductions again and plans to apply one this week to some beautiful pheasant. Wild pheasants have a dark, gamy flavor. Domestic pheasants, like the ones we will be serving, have a much lighter, delicately flavored flesh.

Our Sunday Jazz brunch this week with pianist Cole Broderick will feature grilled New York strip steak with truffled fries and Vidalia onion rings ($16); a cornmeal-bacon waffle with grilled ham steak ($14); funnel cakes with warm berry compote and choice of bacon or sausage ($14); and strozzapretti pasta à la vodka with grilled marinated chicken breast ($15). Appetizer specials include Rhode Island littleneck clams steamed in white wine ($13); a salad of Sunset Hill Farm greens tossed in a red wine vinaigrette ($7); crabcake with lemon caper mayonnaise ($16) 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).
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Live Piano Jazz
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays the baby grand Tuesday and Friday night, and during Sunday brunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
(barring special events that preclude live music.)
Cost: No cover charge

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 at an additional charge or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $80 to $200 per person for seven 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, September 10, Tuesday, September 11, Wednesday, September 12, and Thursday, September 13.

$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:
brined and roasted pork loin stuffed with polenta and fresh roasted local corn, with a corn-broth and sage sauce

Notes on Nico and Léo:
Four-year-old Nico has really taken to having Grimm's fairy tales read to him at bedtime, a development that his father is "thrilled about."
"Really?" asked Nico's Mom, who had read her son the fairly gruesome "The True Bride" at bedtime the night before, and was a little worried about how the wicked stepmother and the persecuted heroine were going to play with her impressionable youngster. Cheryl has a problem with the fact that the true bride wins her wealth and eventually her man not through hard work, but by sleeping while an anonymous old woman takes care of all her problems for her. "And I found myself at great pains to explain that even though Nancy is your stepmother, that doesn't mean she's evil," said Cheryl.
"That's okay," Paul said. "One of the most important lessons about the evil stepmother and the other bad characters is it's not just people you DON'T know who are scary. It's a great format for explaining stuff. I'm one of those people who firmly believe that scary stories are good for children. A kid who grows up thinking all is sun and light is going to be awfully depressed when he finds out it's nighttime."

Okay. But for the record, Paul's stepmother Nancy is really, really, unanimously and without question, nice.

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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