Thanksgiving Drinks: Festive Cocktails, Mocktails and More…

Thanksgiving has long been associated with harvest feasting, but what to drink with the holiday spread? While food may normally form the focus for your drink pairing choices, Thanksgiving - now more than ever - is as much about celebrating togetherness as it is about the turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie.

Here are a few ideas for festive Thanksgiving drinks to help make the occasion even extra special.

Festive Fall Themed Cocktails

Many classic Thanksgiving flavours are also perfect for Thanksgiving cocktails. Think warm spices, cranberries, apple, caramel, and even pumpkin.

• Cinnamon Tamarind Margarita - The cinnamon and tamarind transform this normally summer drink into a warming cocktail perfect for autumn celebrations
• Pumpkin Spice Old Fashioned - Another classic bourbon cocktail with a spicy autumnal twist
• Hanky Panky - the choice Thanksgiving cocktail from our mixologist friends at Mixellany, made with gin, sweet vermouth, and Fernet Branca
• Sloe gin silver fizz - perfect if you’ve made your own sloe gin; a twist on a classic sloe gin fizz, shaken with egg white for a silky cocktail
• Cranberry Sour - Cranberry sauce in a cocktail - yes! From mixologist Myles Davies.
• Classic Manhattan - It’s hard to go wrong with a classic, and this bourbon-based cocktail with orange bitters is an apt match for classic Thanksgiving fare

For more cocktail making advice, check out How to make simple great cocktails from Bristol-based bar consultant and all knowing expert on great cocktails, Kate Hawkings.

Punch Bowls and Pitchers: Thanksgiving drinks for a crowd

Pitcher drinks and punch bowls are perfect for parties, particularly on Thanksgiving when you’re possibly too busy basting the turkey to make cocktails. Here’s a few Thanksgiving pitcher drinks you can make ahead:

• Spiced cranberry punch with fresh cranberries, ginger, and fresh citrus
• Pumpkin punch optionally served in an actual pumpkin!
• Autumn sangria with pomegranate, apple and cinnamon

Read on for some non-alcoholic punch bowl ideas!

Non-alcoholic Thanksgiving drinks

This non-alcoholic autumn Sangria is a bit like an amped up iced tea, with lots of flavour from pomegranate, apple, citrus, and cinnamon.

Rainbow Sherbet Party Punch - It’s not necessarily autumnal, but it’s a classic American family favourite punch bowl recipe that’s fizzy, colourful, and even good for kids.

When it comes to Thanksgiving mocktails, make them extra special by incorporating spices and herbs to provide extra complexity that you won’t otherwise get from the inclusion of booze. For example: Fiona’s Kaffir Lime Mojito, or this Blackberry and Sage Spritzer.

And of course you’ll find loads more mocktail recipes in Fiona’s book How to drink without drinking.

Hot drinks

Cold weather festivities are the perfect excuse for hot beverages like mulled wine or mulled cider (which you can also easily make non-alcoholic). And let’s not forgot hot rum punch and hot toddies!

Wine and beer

Of course, wine and beer are perfectly legitimate drink options and may just be the easiest choice if you’re planning a large gathering. In which case, what to choose that can cope with the myriad flavours on the table? You’ll find some ideas in these posts from the archive:

• How Thanksgiving sides can inspire your wine pairing
• Which beer pairs best with the Thanksgiving feast?

Top image by 5PH at shutterstock.com

How to host a tamalada (Mexican tamale-making party)

If you’ve never before heard of a tamalada then get ready for what could be the next best invention in food-based entertaining. A tamalada is is a traditional Mexican event where groups of family and friends gather together to make tamales, often around Christmastime. What’s a tamale? Let’s start there…

What are tamales and why do they make great party food?

Tamales are a traditional Mexican dish made of masa (a corn-derived dough), stuffed with various fillings, then steamed in a corn leaf or banana leaf. Tamales have a very long history in Mexico, originating in Mesoamerica as early as 8000 BC and were used by the Aztecs and Mayans as easily portable food for hunters, soldiers, and travellers.

Tamales are a wonderfully satisfying and delicious example of traditional Mexican fare with endless adaptations. Making them is also a bit of a labour of love - making the fillings, kneading the dough, stuffing the tamales, and assembling the parcels for steaming takes time and effort. And so, the tamale party was born, wherein everyone comes together to pitch in, stories are shared, and memories are made. Tamaladas are typically held in autumn and winter, particularly around Christmas as a multi-generational multi-family event. But there’s no reason you can’t hold a tamale party any time of year.

Photo by iotae via Flickr

How to make tamales

If you’re going to host a tamalada then it’s best to get acquainted with the steps involved in making a tamale. It’s a bit of an art form, and expect you and your guests to learn as you go. Here’s a summary with some useful links to get you started:

1. Assemble your fillings. Anything goes, really, and feel free to get creative here: meat, cheese, vegetables, beans, even fruit can work in a tamale. Pork in red chile sauce is a popular tamale filling, as well as shredded chicken with green salsa. For a vegetarian version, try these feta and sweet potato tamales, or sweetcorn with black beans and cheese. The options are endless!

2. Make the dough. The dough is made from masa harina, aka corn masa, combined with pork lard or vegetable shorting and stock. Rick Bayless’s basic tamal dough is a good recipe to get you started.

3. Assemble the tamales. A corn husk or banana leaf is usually used to wrap each tamale. This is where the artistry comes in. The dough gets smeared onto the husk, and then the trick is assembling just enough filling to be able to roll up the dough to totally encase the filling (it’s easy to overfill). Check out these step by step photos for a useful demo.

4. Steam the tamales for about 1 1/2 hours.

5. Serve ideally along side a selection of salsas, sauces and guacamole.

Where to get Mexican ingredients in the UK:

Depending on where you live, it can be tricky to get hold of corn masa and corn husks so you may need to order online. Here’s a couple places we like here in the UK:

• Otomi

• Cool Chilli Company

Hosting the tamalada

The whole idea with a tamalada is that everyone pitches in. These are typically family affairs so don’t worry excessively about being the perfect host; instead focus on creating a scene of togetherness that gets everyone involved.

• Create a space around a big table where everyone can gather.

• Invite guests to bring their own tamale fillings, appetizers, side dishes, or drinks.

• Give a quick demonstration of how a tamale is made

• Let your guests loose in making tamales of their own

• Once the tamales are made, enjoy the feast!

A tamalada is as much about eating together as it is cooking together. Have fun opening the parcels and tucking in. Make it a feast with a few Mexican side dishes and drinks to match.

Photo by Monica Shaw

What to drink at a tamale party

You’ll want to keep your wits about you while making the tamales, so start with an agua fresca (‘fresh water’) such as this cucumber agua fresca from Wahaca’s Thomasina Miers which can be made ahead.

For drinks, you’ve got options. For cocktails you can never go wrong with a great margarita. Or for something a bit different, try this Tanqueray Mexican Collins.

Picking a wine or beer pairing for a tamale is going to very much depend on the filling. Check out these posts for some inspiration

• Wine beer and other pairings for Mexican food
• Some great food pairings for tequila

Monica Shaw developed her love of tamales while living in Austin, Texas. She writes about food and nature on her website Eat Sleep Wild while supporting other writers through her online portfolio site at Writer’s Residence.

Cheese and Pickles: Take your cheese board to the next level with homemade pickles

When we think about what to put with a cheese board, we often turn to chutneys, artisan crackers, and maybe some fresh fruits but you can make your cheese board extra special and even more interesting with homemade pickles.

Monica Shaw, the writer and food producer behind Eat Sleep Wild, offers some tips as well as a recipe for spiced blackberry pickles that you can make with foraged blackberries.

“Have pickles will travel. I’ve been on the road most of this summer, travelling through Scotland and Wales, exploring the outdoors, camping, hiking, and researching potential areas for my business’s future HQ. I’ve also been meeting up with other foodie folks I know – it seems these days we’re all over the country, and it’s such a treat be able to finally hit the road and reunite in person. And so it was that I arranged a stopover at Kavey (of Kavey Eats) and her husband Pete who’ve set up an awesome home and Airbnb near Abergavenny.

When I asked Kavey what I should bring she asked “what have you been pickling lately?” Music to my ears. I have long been captivated by various methods of food preservation – fermenting, canning, and dehydrating to name just a few things. However pickling has been my mainstay, and the technique I come to time and time again for preserving the gluts (usually vast quantities of foraged food I find, but also things I’ve grown in my garden, or can get a deal on in the grocery store).

Unlike chutneys, which are decidedly sweet, pickles tend to have a greater dimension of sour, and are the perfect compliment to cheese (not to mention other savoury foods, especially barbecue, burgers, or hot dogs).

On this occasion, Kavey had curated a selection of Welsh cheeses so the pickle question was appropriate. I don’t think she was expecting I’d arrive in my van with quite this many homemade pickles on board:

1. Chicago-style giardiniera, which literally translates to “vegetables under vinegar” and is often made using whatever vegetables happen to be in abundance in the moment.
2. Zydeco beans – crispy runner beans pickled in a garlicky brine
3. Pickled wild garlic bulbs – these are particularly great with charcuterie
4. Pear aigre doux, a sweet and sour pickle flecked with fresh vanilla and peppercorns
5. Raspberry & cranberry jam – the only non pickle, but fantastic with cheese!
6. Pickled blackberries, the star of the pickle show – you can find the recipe below

We were lucky to have some amazing cheeses from the Welsh Cheese Company on our cheese board - Kavey had been working with them to source cheeses for a private tasting event, and I was grateful to be on the receiving end of a sampler. We all agreed that the pickles took the whole cheese board experience to the next level, with the pickled blackberries being the outstanding winner, pairing particularly well with soft goat cheeses.

Pickling may sound like a dark art – and indeed many pickles involve a multistep process including brining and ageing. However there are plenty of quick pickles you can make that can be eaten almost straight away (most pickles benefit from at least a day or two of resting to let the flavours come together). Zuni café’s zucchini pickles come to mind, particularly for those of you experiencing a glut of courgettes (it also works with marrows). Or get stuck into any one of these fantastic books on pickling:

• The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich
• Salt Sugar Smoke by Diana Henry
• Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry by Cathy Barrow
• The Preservation Kitchen by Paul Virant

A great pickle to make in late summer / early autumn is these pickled blackberries, particularly if you have wild brambles growing nearby (it works with store-bought blackberries, too, but it’s way more rewarding when you can pick your own). I love these pickles with soft goat and sheep cheeses, but they’re also great with venison, or even on top of ice cream.

Pickled Blackberries

Ingredients

• 500ml blackberries
• 250ml white vinegar
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp allspices
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 pinch ground mace
• 250 grams sugar

Instructions

1. Soak the blackberries in vinegar overnight with all the spices, but keep back the sugar.
2. The next day, strain the spiced vinegar into a saucepan, and put the blackberries into a large clean jar.
3. Add the sugar to the vinegar and slowly bring the mixture to the boil. Stir frequently so that the sugar dissolves. Continue to simmer until the liquid is syrupy and has reduced slightly.
4. Pour the hot syrup over the blackberries and seal.”

Photo © Monica Shaw

Six top tips for creating a vegan and gluten-free barbecue

Just because you're gluten or dairy-intolerant doesn't mean you have to miss out on the barbecue fun as food writer Monica Shaw demonstrates.

"Barbecues are often considered the domain of meat lovers, perched around the bbq over a slab of spare ribs or a stack of beefy burgers. But there’s no reason that cooking with fire need be restricted to meat.

Plant-based food is equally viable BBQ fare, and is indeed often best when prepared over the coals. There’s no need to be mystified when it comes to vegan / gluten free grilling. Here’s a few options to get you started.

• Veggie burgers are ubiquitous but the kind you buy in packages are often disappointing. Try making your own, for example, The Really Hungry Burger from Anna Jones works great on the grill
• Grilled vegetables are always an option and can be amped up with spice rubs and marinades. My favourite BBQ veg include: courgettes, onions, aubergine, mushrooms, sweetcorn, peppers, and tomatoes. Just coat with oil, and season with salt, pepper, and (optionally) a tasty spice blend such as jerk spices or ras el hanout. For a killer kebab, try the Tofu Kebabs with Muhamarra from 101 Cookbooks.
• Tempeh is my all time favourite “meaty” option for the BBQ. Try the Maple, Lime and Chipotle Tempeh Tacos from Demuths Cookery School, which are gluten-free, too, when served with corn tortillas.
• Gluten Free BBQ options are easier than you might think. Corn tortillas are just one idea, or try farinata / socca (made with chickpea flour) as an alternative to flatbread. And don’t forget carb-happy BBQ side dishes. Favourites include Heston Blumenthal’s Crushed Jersey Royals and Riverford’s Griddled Leeks with Wild Rice and Quinoa.
• Don’t forget dips. All manners of BBQ things are better when paired with a tasty dip or savoury drizzle. My favourites are baba ganoush and salsa macha, but even straight up tahini or olive oil will do. And they all go well with both meaty dishes and vegan dishes, so everyone can enjoy a grand bbq together, whatever your dietary preferences!
• In terms of drinks the only drink that can potentially cause problems for the gluten-intolerant according to Coeliac UK is beer though there are now quite a few gluten free brews. Cider is a delicious gluten-free alternative for a barbecue. Wine is not a problem from the point of view of gluten but some products used in fining such as casein (milk protein) and egg white make them off-limits for vegans. Most supermarket own label wines indicate their suitability for vegans on the back label as do wines sold by organic specialists such as Vintage Roots.

Images taken at Demuths, Bath ©Rob Wicks of Eat Pictures