It's here...

When you ask a lot of people what their favorite holiday is, they will probably rattle off an answer like Christmas, Halloween or their birthday and those days are all great but sometimes they have a little bit too much emphasis thrown on them for me.  Ask me and my answer is going to be a little out of the ordinary.  I'm a big holiday girl, and love to celebrate them all whether it be New Year's Day or Easter but I hold a very special place in my heart for the All-American edition of 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Election Day (yes, when you have a degree in Political Science and tend to follow politics like a sport you view it as a holiday) and when you like to cook, Thanksgiving becomes like the world series of cooking and entertaining for the year.   You think of Thanksgiving and I'm going to almost guarantee that you are going to get all warm and nostalgic pretty quickly on yourselves.  It's a holiday that's based on so many things but it comes down to great food, being surrounded by your family, and a lot of tradition and really what more can you ask for out of a day and because it's this day we celebrate every 4th Thursday of November every year it becomes quite special. 


Everyone has a "bucket list" of things they want to do in their life and among a lot of other things, I have the life long dream and utmost desire to host Thanksgiving for 30 at some point where I would cook the meal of my life, everyone would sit and eat for hours and it would just be an all-around amazing day.  Don't get me wrong, every year I have good Thanksgivings without hosting them.  For the last several years, we have gone to my Uncle Frank and Aunt Sandy's house for Thanksgiving and I think it was 3 holidays ago where my Aunt blew my mind at the table by announcing that this was her 82nd or some other obscene number turkey that shes made in her life and obviously when someone makes that many turkeys, they are going to be good (even with all of the hype, she's still a believer in the low and slow method and the turkey comes out moist and juicy every year).  But I know one day, my aunt will pass the baster to me when she's had enough of cooking turkey and when that day comes, I promise all of you that you will never see another Thanksgiving meal like it.  I think about it all the time what my most perfect Thanksgiving would look like, what we would eat, how the turkey would be cooked and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I have an entire binder of Thanksgiving recipes from old magazines preserved, ready to be broken out when the day comes. 


One of my favorite days of the year happened on Friday...the day where the November issue of Bon Appetit arrived in my mailbox.  I know in the magazine world, people usually wait for the "September issue" because it's all about fall fashion and such but for me November means Thanksgiving and when obsessed about the holiday it becomes a very big deal.  I can't wait every year to see what recipes the editors come up with, what new technique they uncover in getting you to prepare the most perfect turkey and just the general excitement to kick off the Thanksgiving season.  And every year you can bring something new to the table whether it be a new take on mashed potatoes or the inspiration to include a veggie that has never been on the table before but in the end it comes down to holding on to those traditions that are very near and dear to your heart and stomach.  Throughout November we are going to talk all about those traditions and share some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes and tips with you so whether you host the holiday or just a happy enjoyer of it you are so hungry and ready for the day when it arrives that you can't wait another instance.  Check out the magazine, get inspired and for what I feel like is my new best friend in the cooking world, Adam Rapoport... I happen to like you even more now that your family and mine happen to have very similar stuffing recipes. 

By the way:  nice try BA in bringing out the new latest and greatest recipes but I have you trumped on this one with the Glazed Hakurei Turnips.  When I ever came across this one, I have to give credit to Stacia and Stone Gardens for including these and getting us addicted to them in our Farm Share back in the early summer.  I still can't wait to try their version though!!

Cook the cover...

There was a time in this house a while ago where we were having dinner parties and theme dinners quite regularly and don't get me wrong because they were fabulous and I would entertain all the time if I could but I had my friends spoiled.  I had an extremely busy summer between work and weddings and everything else and I would see my friends (yes Jon and Sean, now you know how to get a meal at this house) at different things and they would always bring up these not so subtle, longing hints of "you know Catie, you are really due to throw a party, when is it going to happen?"  So of course this got the bug in my ear and Friday night turned into the right night to have a dinner party.   Things were starting to really fall into place for the 6 of us who were around, I would take care of the main course, Deanna would bring a salad, Suzanne would be in charge of wine, and Kara had the handle on dessert and we would be in business.  I vetoed any idea of appetizers because as Sam Sifton said in his NY Times article recently "Do you really want your guests to fill up on nuts when you are giving them some spectacular main course" and he was right, we sure didn't need any extra food.  Since I hadn't cooked in awhile I knew that I had to step it up a notch and being off all day on Friday I thought "Oh this will be great, I will have X amount of hours to stay home and cook and put together this meal at a leisurely place".  I decided that we would have a riff on the roasted pork loin from the cover of this month's Bon Appetit, sweet potato gnocchi with sage and chestnuts, and sauteed vegetable bundles that are inspired by my mother's shoestring veggies.  Everything else was taken care of and I had to make 3 dishes over the course of an entire afternoon.

Really who was I trying to kid....Friday turned into a day from hell for me.  I spent the morning fighting for over an hour with my bank, went for a manicure appointment that I never actually made (at that point, I was just like I'm loosing my mind) and finally when I was about to leave to go home and cook I had a somewhat major issue with my car that needed immediate attention.  Note to all: if a dashboard signal on your car is not only blinking and beeping, it's kind of a big deal.  Needless to say, I felt like my life was in shambles and all I wanted to do at this point was go home, cover my counter tops in flours and make gnocchi but instead I kept seeing the minutes ticking away in front of me and I was on the verge of panic attacks of how this was all going to get done and kept thinking "Dear God, do not let the theme of today be how this dinner party is going to turn out".  But it pays to be loyal to your local, tried and true mechanic who gave me a ride home while he dealt with the car and I was able to concentrate on dinner and not worry about anything else for a few hours and everything worked out fine.  I prepared my pork right up until the moment it needed to get roasted, prepped my veggies and made gnocchi at a record pace before anyone even showed up and was able to even enjoy a sparkly fall cocktail with everyone as the meal finished cooking. 

And obviously from the fact that not one ounce of food was leftover, I would say it was a big frickin success.  By the time dinner was on the table, I wasn't completely exhausted from cooking all day like I've been in the past and got to sit and eat and drink and really visit with my friends. In so many ways it was one of the most ideal and deeply satisfying dinner parties that I've had in a long time, all of the food turned out delicious, we lingered at the table long after dinner was over and even the cleanup wasn't bad at all.  Maybe Friday worked out just how it was supposed to regardless of all of the drama that I had throughout the day.  Maybe I wasn't supposed to have all of these hours to stay home and cook and overstimulate myself further because really it just shows that in order to make a nice dinner you don't have to be chained to your stove for hours on end?  Maybe I was supposed to get stressed out about everything else so by the time dinner rolled around, this would feel like a walk in the park?  You can try to fight everything little thing that happens in your life or you can just go with it and know that it's going to turn out how it was meant to be and more often then not it will be on the good side of things.  If you asked me this at 2pm when everything was hitting the fan I would have laughed at you but when I was laying in bed that night after everything was over and done with, I wouldn't have traded my dinner and my day for the world.

A Note on the Pork:

At first glance when reading the recipe for the pork, I was overwhelmed just looking at.  I'm past the point in my cooking life where I want to make recipes with 22 ingredients and 15 different steps on a regular basis but it looked really good so I knew I was going to have to adapt the recipe to make it more real life conducive.  Here is the rundown of my pork tenderloin:
-Instead of using an entire pork loin that I would have to butterfly and roll, I used the thin pork loins and made one deep slit in the center of the pork that I would stuff with my filling. 
-As much as all of the ingredients of the BA filling recipe sounded delicious, it was a lot of stuff that I wasn't about to get involved in.  Instead I made a simple filling with sauteed kale, garlic and crimini mushrooms and brushed the pork with some fig jam that I had at home to give it some sweetness.  By the way: If you have this fear of serving "healthy" veggies at a dinner party such as kale because you think your guests are going to balk at them, throw the fear out the window.  I honestly don't think my guests even realized the green stuff in the filling was kale considering there was nothing left on anyones plates. 
-I wrapped my pork in the prosciutto, seared it off and right as it was about to go into the oven, I gave it another brush with the fig jam to let it caramelize on top.
-Around the pork, I roasted chopped up apple slices and whole red grapes that I tossed in the leftover pan drippings mixed with the fig jam instead of the apple cider and  chicken stock mixture they suggested.
-Because I was no longer cooking an entire loin of stuffed pork, I adjusted my cooking time from an hour and 40 minutes to just around an hour where it registered at the 140 degree mark. 

fun napkins and flowers is all you need to dress up basic white

Prosciutto wrapped pork my way

Deanna's salad (really homemade dressed this time)

sweet potato gnocchi



I'm biased but really, what restaurant can you get a meal like that now?



catiecakes: flavor inspiration

So by now most of you know that I have this side baking business called "catiecakes" and it's actually starting to feel like a legit, very adult thing to do (and not one of these crazy side projects that I think about all the time but never actually materialized).  The business cards are out and about, the orders are starting to flow in at a manageable, enjoyable pace and very shortly I have to bite the bullet and get the facebook page/website up and running.  I've had so many people say to me before "Oh quit your job, open a store and bake full time.  You'll be great".  And obviously I love the positive words of encouragement and don't get me wrong, that is the end goal but just thinking about an actual store right now is like taking laps around the anxiety pool.  If I learned anything from the handful of business courses that I took in college is that you have to create demand before you can have supply for something so if I could keep baking and continuing to get the catiecakes name out there for the next few months, find a place to have a pop-up shop or as I like to refer to it as "the chic-modern bake sale", and keep on thinking how I can make my business more unique and different then the one next door then we are moving in the right direction and before you know it I'll be trading those early mornings for baking instead of running for the train to New York. 

I'm going to an Oktoberfest party this evening at our friends Julia and Tom and from the sound of it, this is going to be quite the event with an expected cast of 75-100 guests.  While I'm not really up on classic German fare, I figured this would be a perfect opportunity for catiecakes to make an appearance and get introduced to a whole new group of people.  So far in the past month, I've done a lot of classic flavors of white/vanilla, chocolate, red velvet, pumpkin and coconut but I was feeling inspired this week and was looking to push the creative envelope a little further today.  Here is the lineup for tonight:

-Purple Velvet with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting:  I've always had a sweet spot in my heart for red velvet cake and I know Julia joins me on this one as well.  The other day I was flipping through a magazine article on different wedding cake flavors and I came across a purple velvet cake and needless to say, I was obsessed just thinking about this genius idea.

-Pistachio with Mocha Butter cream:  This was a Martha Stewart inspiration and only Martha can send me on wild goose chases through New Haven County looking for special ingredients to use in her recipes and this time it was Pistachio Extract.  I know, you're probably thinking to yourself "wait does pistachio extract even exist?"  but I can assure you it does by the way of specialty baking stores and I'm due for a trip to the King Arthur Baking Company soon.  For the record, and to save yourself time and peace of mind, Whole Foods, nor any grocery store or craft venue sells it in the area.  For this round, I used a stand-in ingredient which looks like it did the trick. 

-Fleur de sel Caramel with Chocolate Butter cream:  The salt with caramel and chocolate phase is huge right now and my friend Michelle sent me this recipe for Crack Brownies this week that uses Maldon sea salt flakes on top of the brownies that look absolutely delish.  I haven't gotten a chance to make the brownies yet but I thought this would be the perfect flavor for a cupcake so they are. 

Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy this beautiful warm weather (it's totally throwing me off on what to wear now but I figured, I might as well enjoy it before there is a foot of snow on the ground). 

The food issue...

There is nothing like being home on a a leisurely Sunday where nothing can get between you and the New York Times.  By now you should know that we are faithful readers of the Times in our house and we become quite territorial over sections of the paper.  I'm one of those typical East Coast girls that loves the Times and everything about it, and still loves the idea of reading an actual newspaper some days.  For as long as I can remember growing up, my mother would buy the paper everyday (because they didn't do home delivery to the area back then) and is a obsessive doer of the crossword puzzle that she has now gotten my brother into doing.   Lets just say it was quite the triumphant day when home delivery began and those blue newspaper bags starting arriving in our driveway.   Everyday is unique in the Times whether it's Wednesday and the dining section, Thursday and it's style day but really nothing can top Sundays.  Between the Metro Section and the "Sunday Routine" column that we play the game all the time about what our own routine would look like, Sunday Styles and the "Modern Love" and "Wedding of the Week", and finally the magazine that is chock full of so many interesting pieces that it becomes reading material for Monday.  I always think about what a perfect Sunday would look like in my eyes and it involves exercise, family dinners at home and lots of time carved out for reading and this week it didn't disappoint in the least bit.  It ended up being "The Food Issue" in the Magazine where all of the articles were dedicated to all things food and drink.  I have linked some of my favorite parts below because they will make you laugh, you'll learn all of these fun and interesting tidbits and you'll even feel sentimental and warm and fuzzy about all of your own memories surrounding the dinner table.  And I'm sure they will make you a better cook.

-"Can a Dinner Party be Stress Free"
Come on who doesn't dream of going to a dinner party hosted by Mark Bittman?  I read a piece by him a number of years ago where he talked about getting over his fear of entertaining and I always try to embody his laid back, at home style when hosting parties. 

-"Everything You Wanted to Know About Food"
A really nice guide that answers all of the questions you have ever had about food, health, policy, dining and etiquette. 

-"Why Does it Matter That Families Eat Together?"
I know the politics of family dinners has become the topic of choice these days and maybe I continue to feed off of all the positive research because I have so many wonderful memories of sitting around my own family table eating dinner together as I was growing up.   Eating dinner at home with my family (and whatever extended guests we have over at the moment) is still one of my most favorite and enjoyable parts of my day because it's like life slows down for a few minutes and you can can sit, eat, connect and relax.  Sam Sifton hits all the right points and as he puts it so eloquently in the end...'it's not so much about the future effect that it will have our lives but on the present moment of all being together just enjoying good food". 

Happy Reading, Happy Monday!!!