Taking Stock

Gravy is generally defined as a type of sauce made from meat juices, often combined with broth or milk, and thickened with a starch such as flour or cornflour.

It can also be the reduced juices left from cooking the main course favourites amongst joints of meat, cuts of fish or any type of poultry.

Although it is fairly simple to make, many home cooks have a difficult time making flavourful, smooth gravy.

How true that is.

You can have the best researched, sourced, crafted and served up meal in the world and yet it can be remembered for ever or consigned to the pedal bin depending on what the gravy was like (if of course it is a meal that can be served with gravy as an accompaniment).

I have experienced the sheer panic of cooking a meal only to realise, on carrying it through to the dinner table, that I have not made any gravy. The situation can be resolved by a quick dash back into the kitchen and a rummage through the drawers for a stock cube, one of those small pre-prepared globules of stock in a blister pack or very much as a last resort four teaspoons of dry gravy granules in half a pint of boiled water.

I have sometimes cheated and bought a ready made sachet of the stuff with which to surprise and amaze dinner guests particularly if, shamefully, I claim it to be all of my own creation. Marks and Spencers and Waitrose, I thank you.

Intentionally planned gravy, as part of a menu, on the other hand can be delicious and it is a real skill to decant off the best juices from the chicken, beef or lamb joint and blend in a few ingredients and seasoning to really emphasise the goodness which may otherwise have been simply poured down the sink when cooled and congealed into something unappetising or after an overnight stagnation on the worktop, if too tired to wash up after the meal, wholly inedible.

Taste must however be complimented by the consistency of the liquid. The English comic Tony Hancock summed up the ideal qualities for the sauce in saying that "my mother was a bad cook but at least her gravy used to move about".

If too runny then any foodstuffs in its way can be swamped, drowned and even washed off the plate. Too thick and there is the potential embarrassment of not being able to pour it out of the pan or gravy boat, or even worse it falls out in one solid mass causing distress around the table from fallout and splashback.

It cannot be overpowering either. I have been tempted, on occasion, to lace a basic gravy mix with a bit of paprika, turmeric or chilli powder or all three at the same time resulting in quite a fierce and fiery outcome which can destroy the subtle flavours of just about any main course.

The liberal addition of wine or beer is a matter for judgement and conviction over what effect is being attempted. It can work well but there is always the risk that it will not, and we are back to the aformentioned hunt for an alternative set of ingredients with which to start again.

The best gravy secrets are those handed down through the generations of a family although such has been the revolution in cooking styles, recipes and the availability of produce not so  much on the old seasonal basis but all year round from different parts of the globe that there has been a strong temptation to adapt and reinvent the traditional versions of gravy.

The emergence of nouvelle cuisine in the 1980's saw gravy used as an art-form usually in the faint flourish of what was referred to as a stock reduction or even a wishy washy, transparent jus. With the miniscule amounts applied by pipette or syringe you could easily be fooled into calling out for the gravy to be brought from the kitchen not realising that it was already on the plate.

Eating habits have also changed over the last few generations.

The formality of a meal has often been forgone for a laptop tv dinner or in our family where the younger adults just move to and from from kitchen to living room in a sort of grazing action. There is nothing at all wrong with this but I was brought up with a big sunday roast as the highlight of the weekly menu. Us children would have to wait until our father got home from a rare but regular pub session on the Sabbath before being able to sit down and enjoy wonderful food and flavours from mothers endeavours in the few hours after the end of the church family service.

Idyllic and a bit "Waltons" it may sound and I accept that those my age may have been the last to have this type of ritualistic mealtime.

I do not however have any fears that gravy will become extinct under the pressures exerted by modern lifestyles, social and economic demographics. If I do get a few emotional wobbles thinking about the tragedy of this as a possibility then I just go down to my local fast food outlet and buy a piping hot, delicious and very comforting polystyrene tray of chips and gravy. Long live gravy!!!!