Posts Tagged ‘meat’
The Art of Gravy Making
I’m a great believer in the benefits of roast dinner as a way to socialise and be merry. I have a pretty stiff opinion about most parts of the process of preparing the aforementioned roast dinner. Every part of the dinner is important – potatoes and pumpkin go together very nicely, onion adds a bit of as the french would say, “I don’t know what”, the meat is clearly the star attraction and the peas and broccoli add an important touch of colour to the plate. However I believe the final crowning achievement of any roaster is the gravy.
Now, before getting too crazy about this gravy business let me say this, it’s easy to screw up, and especially easy to screw up when you start adding your own stuff to it so let me step you through the basics and then we will work on spicing things up a little.
- First thing’s first. Roast the shit out of your favourite meat.
- Now when you are done and have carved it and it’s ready to serve get all that yummy meat juice from your cutting board and add it back into the roasty tray.
- Stick your roasting tray on the stove on a low-medium heat and sprinkle a good dose of flour lightly across the entire roasting pan. You don’t want to dump it all in one big blob, you want it to be more like snow all over the pan juices. Add to this a healthy amount of salt and crack some pepper as well. The salt is the key ingredient so don’t be too shy, but for god’s sake don’t overdo it.
- Grab a fork and using the back of it, stir all this flour into the juices. This should all turn pretty brown and very pasty.
- Add to this paste some water. The amount depends on a variety of things – how much paste you’ve got, how thick you want the gravy and the alignment of the constellation of Aries in the southern sky. You actually want this water to be the water you have poured off the peas and broccoli if possible, otherwise normal water is fine.
- Cook this concoction over a low heat while constantly stirring. This will end up as the gravy.
- Undoubtedly there won’t be the right amount or it will be the wrong consistency so you need to add more water/more flour or more of both (to make more) If you are going to add more flour you should premix it with a little bit of water in a cup before you add it to the mix. This stops it from turning lumpy and ruining your masterpiece.
So that’s all pretty easy, and to be fair the gravy that you will end up with should be pretty amazing. Amazing is good, but it isn’t going to keep you happy on 7 meals a week so it’s time to spice things up a little bit. There is a variety of things you can do to add your own take and as long as you don’t go too mad adding pretty much anything is going to give you some unique flavours. A few things I like to do are,
- Add a bit of chilli powder when you are first adding the flour and salt.
- Stir in some tomato paste before you add the water, barbecue sauce goes alright as well.
- I do this pretty much every time I make gravy – add a good splash of red wine with the water – you can probably add white wine as well but I’ve never tried.
- Use beef stock instead of water – You could do this if you don’t have much (is any) pan juices.
The Good Old Fashioned Fry-Up
It is a commonly held belief that greasy food is the be all and end all of hangover cures however I have don’t believe it is the grease in the food that is the cure. Now, don’t get me wrong a greasy bucket of KFC shared between hanging mates or a quick trip down to the local fish and chip store for a steak sammy certainly put the right (or correct) foot forward in getting back on the wagon but it is my belief that it is actually the nutrients and energy in what you are eating that is the solution to the night before’s problem.
All that being said, the Good, Old-Fashioned fry up is possibly the greates, possibly the 3rd greatest or perhaps just a good hangover cure. There are a couple of key factors to make it the success that it should be. First of all, there are a few ingredients that have to be there if you plan to cure even the slightest of hangover. This is by no means an upper limit, but at the very least: meat, bready stuff, and something else.
Let me explain, there is no substitute for meat. I don’t care if it’s pig, cow, sheep or sausage (I’ve not tried fish in a fry-up, but I’ll keep an open mind), but what ever it is it has to be there. I’m not saying this to rile up the vegetarians, (though I’ve been guilty of having a crack before) the high level of protein and iron these particular ingredients carry is imperative and whats more, tofu tastes like nothing and doesn’t compare to a steak no matter who you talk to. The bread, this doesn’t have to be bread, toast is fine, so is potato, pasta isn’t traditionally fried but would suffice and rice is a bit boring, but who am I to talk you can use your imagination – mashed potato from the night before also works (can anyone say bubble and squeak). The key part of this is the carbohydrates, slow burn energy is what you are going to need in 2 hours time so you don’t regress from feeling like having a shot at the title.
I just want to put this out there, I’m not a nutritionist so all of this jibber-jabber about nutrients isn’t worth a dime.
Finally, something else is important, ideally this isn’t just going to be 1 thing but a selection of goodies. My particular favourite is egg, scrambled or (preferably) fried, it doesn’t matter as long as it has a sprinkling of salt and some cracked pepper. There is a plethora of other options, mushrooms are great, tomatoes are tasty, not to mention onions and capsicum – fried together are amazing. What is important is that the extra flavours work with your 2 aforementioned staples. What’s more noone just wants a piece of bacon on toast, it has to have flavour.
Now what hasn’t been mentioned is preparation. If you can help it, you don’t want to be zipping down to the supermarket to grab supplies. Even if it is a 15 minute round trip, the chances are you are not going to be fit for public consumption let alone capable of making the important decisions. Ideally you have the ingredients in the fridge/freezer, it doesn’t matter if you can’t get 12 different ingredients on the plate the aforementioned guidelines need to be followed but if the choice is between frying 4 day old mushrooms and braving the supermarket take the option of the mushrooms.
Your head will appreciate it.
You should follow me on Twitter.