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Hello, everyone.

Recently, Chef Paul tinkered with his mother Sophie's famous 35-year- old duck recipe, substituting apricot for tamarind and coconut. His long-suffering wife objected strenuously on historical grounds at first, until she actually tasted the dish. Then she said, okay, make the change, just don't mess with Sophie's veal scallopine.

But Thursday, when Cheryl cornered him about his plans for the coming week, he admitted: "We're doing the Long Island duck in a new way."
"Because the last two ways weren't brilliant enough?" Cheryl enquired drily.
"We're actually playing with the cut, which I kind of like. We're doing it with a pomegranate glaze, but instead of slicing it, we're doing a variation on a classic Chinese rolling cut, which results in triangular pieces of duck rather than thin slices. It looks nice, and it's fun."

"Is this the same duck from Long Island that we have been using? The Pekin duck?"
"It's not pee-can duck," said the Chef, needlessly goading his Southern-born wife. "There's no nuts in it. It's Pee-king duck."
"There's no G on the end of it," the American wife responded. "It's P- E-K-I-N. How would you say that in French?"
'Puh-cahn," Paul said.
"And what did I say?" Cheryl asked.
"Pee-can," The chef answered. "Like the nut."
"Now you're just messin' with me," his wife said, with an eye-roll.

It causes a fair amount of confusion when we specify that we are serving "Pekin" duck, which refers to the breed, not the Chinese method of preparation that produces skin crisped to crackling stage and flesh cooked to a soft gray mush. But it's a distinction worth noting, because the taste and texture of duck can vary wildly from breed to breed. If we don't raise the issue at the outset, people with rigidly fixed preconceived notions about what is "good" duck can get quite ruffled.
Most European varieties of duck are descended from wild, lean Mallard, which has a rich, dark, gamy meat. Pekin duck (a French bastardization of a Chinese place name, since ducks were probably first domesticated in China) is a breed that is so commonly farmed on Long Island that it is often called American Long Island duck. It was introduced to the U.S. From Canada in 1873 and is frequently used to make Peking duck.
Pekin ducks are the large, rowdy white breed that Donald Duck was modeled after. It has a deep, rich flavor and a high fat content, but the flavor is lighter than many other duck breeds. (It's flavor is stronger than quail but not as pronounced as squab.) The raw flesh is firm and pale red and proceeds to a deep grey color with cooking time. Because of the fat content (about 50 percent) the breast shrinks considerably during cooking. We score the skin of the breast before sautéeing it to let the fat out, and to assure that the meat isn't greasy or mushy.

The Pink Plate Special this week will be veal breast stuffed with a mushroom duxelle, braised in cider, served on pear purée.

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.

The harvest season is in full swing and we are getting ingredients that are really extraordinary. We have beautiful Rouge VIF pumpkins from Sheldon Farms. We've done purées with them, roasted them in chunks, and at some point next week, we'll make a pie with them.
Rouge VIFs look like the kind of segmented orange pumpkin that everyone learns to draw in grade school, only flattened. Bright orange inside and out, they are slightly sweet, but have a higher cooking quality than most pumpkins, possibly because they are technically a squash. In Europe, they like to carve them out and use them as a soup tureen.
"They are so dense, and a little sweet and flavorful," Chef Paul said. "I think they are my favorite squash."

"We have these French melons from Kilpatrick Farm that are the best melon I've ever tasted," Chef Paul said. "They're small - large softball sized. The outside of the melon looks green and smooth, almost like a honeydew melon, but the inside is very much like cantaloupe flesh, and they are beyond the pale, as it were. They taste kind of like a sun-dried cantaloupe, if you can imagine that."

By that he means that the flesh is less wet than a cantaloupe, and the intensity of the flavor is more extreme. They keep showing up in salads on the vegetarian plate, and we were using them the other night almost as a vegetable side.
"We're using them almost every place we can put them. I think I might like to do them almost by themselves with a little Serrano ham," Paul said.

Also from Kilpatrick, we're getting the late summer crop of fresh raspberries, and stupidly pretty, huge watermelon radishes. We cooked the radishes and served them this week as a purée under seared scallops, which according to Paul is "pretty intriguing."
"Isn't that kind of a waste of the gorgeous color of those radishes to purée them?" Cheryl asked.
Paul looked surprised: "The flavor of them is pretty extraordinary. I love cooked radishes, and we have a lot of them, so we have to think of a lot of ways to use them. But we're serving them raw, too, so you can see the shape and color. It's another thing that shows up a lot on the vegetarian option."

Sheldon Farms is a sixth-generation potato farm in Salem in Washington County, New York, that has diversified in recent years to cultivate a wide range of specialty produce. 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, squash, root crops and greenhouse cucumbers and cole crops.

We also have French butter pears. They come from that mythical place called Jansal Valley, which is the intellectual indentation that specialty food importer Sid Wainer invented as the provenance for things they can get that you can't get. French butter pears are a rough-skinned pear, but not as rough-skinned as a Bosc. They look like Bartletts, and, as Paul says: "the flavor is to die for. They have so much sweet, so much acid, so much pear flavor, so much spicy.
The skin has a slightly astringent quality, which is slightly pleasurable. I actually like to eat them better with the skin, which is a little unusual for me with a rough-skinned pear."

Maybe it's the presence of fresh-off-the-vine-tomatoes, but Chef Paul has mysteriously entered the strange and wondrous saffron zone.
He's been blending tomatoes and saffron and fennel and sherry, and playing with fish presentations in a delightfully aromatic way.
"Saffron seems to be the thing that I need to eat right now," he said.

Because we have been switching to a buffet format for breakfast on days when the hotel is really crowded, we've decided to extend our fabulous à la carte brunch to both Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday, our artist-in-residence, jazz pianist Cole Broderick, plays the baby grand piano from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The brunch menu this Saturday and Sunday will feature venison osso bucco with organic white polenta ($16); root beer-glazed center cut pork chop with bourbon mashed sweet potatoes and caramelized onions ($15); Amaretto French toast with maple waln and grilled ham steaku ($14); and Jamaican-style pulled chicken with fried green plaintain and roast corn black bean salsa ($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).

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 17, Tuesday, September 18, Wednesday, September 19, and Thursday, September 20.

$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:
veal breast stuffed with a mushroom duxelle, braised in cider, served on pear purée

Notes on Nico and Léo:
We had to laugh the other day because we were at a farmstand selecting tart apples and 4-year-old Nico said, "Mommy, can we bake a pie tonight?" The farmstand owner said, "You don't need to go to all that trouble, we have pies already made." Nico looked at him as if he were insane, as if he had suggested that it would be better to let the kids next door make the Play-Doh animals so he could have the pleasure of looking at them.

We declined the pre-made pie and took the apples, and by the time we had gotten home, Léo had fallen asleep in the carseat. That gave Cheryl and Nico time to construct and roll out a pie crust and peel and slice apples and season the ingredients. (In case anyone thinks he's a culinary prodigy, he's terrible at peeling, pretty avid about slicing, as long as you help him keep his fingers out of the way of the blade, and great at adding cinnamon, allspice, vanilla and nutmeg, as long as you restrain his enthusiasm. We discovered that lime works even better than lemon for flavoring apples, mostly because we didn't have any lemons.)

At first, both kids were hesitant to eat the apple pie because it was unfamiliar-looking and a little unwieldy on baby spoons. Nico frequently is more interested in the process of cooking than the process of eating. When we're in the supermarket, he loudly proclaims that broccoli is his favorite vegetable, but we don't think he's ever actually put it in his mouth after we've brought it home and cooked it. Then Mommy spoon-fed Léo a bite of apple pie, and she was sold for life. Nico quickly followed her example, and it was all Cheryl could do to keep them from eating the entire pie before their Daddy got home. He arrived and was so surprised to find fresh-baked deep- dish apple pie that he ate two slices. Nico said, "Aren't I a good baker, Daddy?" To which the master chef replied, quite sincerely, "This might be the best pie I've had in years."

And Nico, who listens to his parents with avidity, said: "That's because the secret ingredient is love."

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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