It’s days before Thanksgiving, and we’re being clobbered with recipes for steamed turkey, curried brussels sprouts and complex squash purees. Yet, while Thanksgiving surely involves cooking for days — then devouring everything in under 30 minutes — it can also be rich with awkward distant-relative encounters. What better time to get liquored up?
Yes, Beaujalois and Pinot Noir and Riesling shine ever so on the Thanksgiving table, but sometimes you need a stiff cocktail to blunt the holiday’s edges.
Since I’ve just had a particularly trying week, I’ve had plenty of inspiration to experiment with that simple but gorgeous concoction, the Negroni. In its classic form, the Negroni is a sweet-bitter blend of gin, sweet vermouth and the Italian bitter Campari. A bad one can taste like airplane fuel, but a great one is bracing, juicy and too easy to make. And, since all of the elements contain alcohol, it can also get you quite buzzed, quite fast. (One Negroni is really all you need; two could cause trouble.)
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