Sesame Boulevardier

Thanksgiving can be a challenging holiday for drinks. Usually you’ve got a wide range of guests, plus a menu that tends to skew towards big, meaty and fatty flavors that are not always an ideal match for fancy wine or food—although I bet my wine nerd friends would beg to differ.<br /><br />When planning out a Thanksgiving meal, just about the last thing I want to do is spend a few hours meticulously crafting a cocktail that requires a lot of time spent away from the table day-of, which is why I love to sandbag drinks. The <a href="https://food52.com/recipes/25945-boulevardier">Boulevardier</a>, a cousin of the iconic <a href="https://food52.com/recipes/20724-the-negroni">Negroni</a>, is a great example of a drink you can prepare ahead of time, and simply pour whenever the mood strikes—you don’t even need to shake or stir. <br /><br />Rather than settle for by-the-book Boulevardier, however. I’ve folded in a few attention-grabbing augmentations. First is the addition of pineapple liqueur, a reference to Rick Martinez’s <a href="https://food52.com/recipes/86744-best-turkey-al-pastor-recipe">Turkey Al Pastor</a>, which brightens the drink up and adds a touch of sweetness and acidity to cut through the heavier flavors on the table. Second is an infusion of black sesame into Averna, a Sicilian bitter liqueur (amaro) that stands in for the Campari that is usually found in a traditional Boulevardier. (If you’re feeling lazy, you can skip the infusion, but you really shouldn’t. It’s a super easy blender method that adds a mysterious, savory-earthy character that seems to come out of left field, but totally makes sense once you get it in the glass.)<br /><br />Make life easy and mix this drink a day or two in advance and let it hang out in the fridge until the time is right; I developed this drink to serve as a digestif-style palate cleanser between the savory and sweet courses of a Thanksgiving (or any) meal.