'Mock Thanksgiving' party recap

November 24, 7:11 AMBaltimore Food ExaminerKit Pollard

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Mmmm...fried turkey. Photo by Kit Pollard.

This weekend, Cooper and I hosted our annual "Mock Thanksgiving" party - a Thanksgiving-themed party with our friends. My sister, Erin, and her friends Libby and Peter came to spend the night, and a handful of local friends came over to visit: Mike and Alicia, Jen and Bill, Kyle (there's your nachos link, Kyle!), Owen, and Cooper's sister Missy and her husband Seth.

We kicked things off with cranberry bellinis and herbed cheese puffs, then Alicia sprang it on us that she'd brought a bottle of wine she got as a Christmas gift from a client last year (she's a speech pathologist). It was a 1996 Chateau St. John cabernet - Wine Advocate wine of the year a few years back. After trying to tell Libby and Peter that we drink like this all the time, we decanted the bottle and poured everybody a little tiny glass.

It was great - as Peter said, "certainly better than anything I usually drink" - but definitely a little oakier and more California-ish than what we usually drink. But delicious (I wish I had the wine vocabulary to do it justice).

After our trial drink, we got down to business with dinner. The menu included:

Cranberry bruschetta. Photo by Kit Pollard. 

• The aforementioned cranberry bellinis and herbed cheese puffs
• Butternut squash soup
• Stuffing "cupcakes"
• Roasted Brussels sprouts and cauliflower (some wrapped in bacon, some not)
• Cranberry bruschetta
• Fried "Casian" turkey (Cajun + Asian)
• A mashed potato bar
• Cinnamon-chocolate cupcakes

Way better than we usually drink. Photo by Kit Pollard.

Dinner was good. For me, the highlights were the roasted vegetables and the turkey skin. Cooper injected the turkey with Island Soyaki marinade from Trader Joe's and rubbed it with a Cajun seasoning that I grabbed off the shelf from Giant. Simple preparation, but combined with a lot of hot peanut oil, the turkey turned out absolutely genius.

Jen's mashed potatoes were pretty fantastic, too - she added just a little Old Bay to the potatoes, which gave them a rich, savory flavor (without being overpowering). We served them with bacon, scallions, cheddar cheese and sour cream. Everybody went back for seconds.

The cranberry bruschetta was good, though I think if I had it to do over again, I'd add something savory to the recipe - maybe top the cranberry with a little bacon. Actually, I think that the bruschetta mix would be a great combination with goat cheese and bacon together. Maybe for next time...

Alicia wasn't thrilled with how her cupcakes turned out, but I thought they were good, if a little intense. She'd decided to top them with a vanilla glaze, which saved them from being too rich. Even if she hadn't, though, I think Dixon and Maddy probably would've taken them down. 

After we'd all eaten our first round of dinner (we did some grazing), Mike left to let the dog out and get more beer and he came back with a surprise: a bottle of 2006 Caymus cabernet. The same client who gifted Alicia the Chateau St. John had given her a bottle of Caymus (a different year) the Christmas before - and we'd loved it. It's a little less expensive than the Chateau St. John, but we remembered it as even better.

And, while we didn't do a side-to-side comparison, we all agreed that we did, in fact, prefer the Caymus. It was a little rounder, if that makes sense, and didn't have quite as much of an aftertaste - it just has a nicer finish.

A few more glasses of wine later, I put away the leftovers (surprisingly few) and we all shuffled off to bed, exhausted. And sated. And primed for real Thanksgiving.