SC - Sausage Gravy & Chocolate Gravy (long!)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Hullo, the List!

I'm sorry I've been unable to spend too much time on the cook's list
lately. I was just reminded last night that I had sort of left people
hanging in the matter of gravies for biscuits; I'm afraid the entire
subject just slipped my mind (further proof of my Yankee origins, I
guess!). Anyway, I attach a recipe for sausage gravy posted fairly
recently to the UseNet newsgroup rec.food.historic, and a recipe for
choclate gravy.

> I really sympathize. I left East Tennessee 20 years ago for strange lands
> (California and then Hawaii) and have had the same problems finding
> certain foods. I know what you mean about missing sausage gravy. I also
> had particular trouble finding cornbread made the way I love it instead of
> that sweet, cake-like stuff at Marie Calendars. By the way, there is a
> newsgroup, alt.appalachian, that has discussions of this sort all the
> time.
> 
> I'm afraid you'll have to learn to cook for yourself, because there's just
> no place to get the authentic stuff. Fortunately, it's pretty simple, when
> you can find the ingredients (I had to send away for corn meal for a
> while). 
> 
> The recipe for gravy couldn't be simpler. I'll ramble through full
> details, just because I love the subject. 
> 
> Get some bulk sausage (Jimmy Dean is good and available most places),
> slice or form into patties and fry on medium heat. Brown it well but don't
> overcook it. Remove the patties from the pan and pour off most of the
> accumulated fat. Do not wash or wipe the pan. All the good flavor is in
> the bits left behind. That's why you should not let the heat get too high,
> because burned bits get bitter. 
> 
> The most mysterious part is getting the ratios of flour to fat to milk
> right. A good rule of thumb is 1 Tablespoon fat to 1 Tablespoon flour to 1
> Cup milk. This makes a typical batch.
> 
> With the right amount of sausage fat in the pan, bring the heat to medium
> high, dump in the flour and stir it around. You have to cook the flour a
> minimum of about 1 minute, or else it tastes starchy. How long you brown
> the flour determines the final color of the gravy, short time for white
> gravy, browned well for up to 10 minutes for really dark gravy. It
> develops a stronger, nutty flavor the longer it cooks (this is what the
> Cajuns call a roux, BTW). After it's brown, it can sit until just before
> you are ready to serve.
> 
> When you are ready, get the pan hot again. Next, pour in the cup of cold
> milk, all at once. This is a little different from how white sauce is
> made.  In that case, you add the liquid a little at a time to avoid lumps. 
> In this case, dump it in all at once and stir more of less continuously. 
> Any lumps will disappear. You need to cook it on med-high to high heat at
> least until it boils, to cook the milk. 
> 
> The art comes in the adjustment of thickness. My grandfather taught me to
> do this (for some reason, gravy has been a male prerogative in my family
> for generations). With the right ratios, the thickness should be about
> right after 1-2 minutes of boiling, but if it's still too thin, keep
> boiling it as long as necessary. You can't overcook it, but you can make
> lumps if you don't stir pretty much continuously. If it gets too thick,
> you can always add more milk to adjust it. Just be sure to continue
> boiling long enough for the new milk to cook, too. It will thicken a
> little as it cools, so try to stop while it's just slightly thinner than
> you think you'll want it when you serve. These are just suggestions,
> experimentation is the only way to perfect this stage.
> 
> While the milk is boiling is a good time to crumble some of the sausage
> patties into the gravy. You can also do this at an earlier stage, like
> when you are browning the flour, but I think it's easiest to keep
> everything right if you do it here. 
> 
> When you're satisfied with the consistency, pour it immediately into a
> bowl and serve. It's best, of course, on fresh hot biscuits (which I don't
> know how to make right), but great on any kind of bread or potatoes. The
> canned biscuits called "Grands" are a pretty good substitute for the real
> thing. As my mother used to write on the bottom of all her recipes, 
> "Enjoy in moderation, to avoid excessive weight gain". 
> 
> Now if I could just learn to make blackberry jelly like my grandmother  
> used to...
> 
> -John Anderson, scientist, scholar and misplaced hillbilly.

I've also seen this made with the sausage meat crumbled and cooked right
into the gravy, almost like a milk-based pasta sauce, but I'm inclined
to guess this is an innovation created by and for Northerners who may
simply lack the essential clue. Or, it could just be somebody's local
variation.

As for chocolate gravy, I was put onto this by Lady Gabrielle d'Outre
Mer, who currently lives in the East, but is living proof that you can
take the Lady out of Meridies, but you can't take Meridies, etc. etc.
She had asked me if I knew where to find a recipe for chocolate gravy,
because it was something her late grandmother used to make, but had
apparently failed to write down. I went and nagged the Hershey people to
see if they had a recipe for this from the back of the cocoa can, circa
1935 or so, and they responded after something like six weeks, with a
recipe. Basically it was for a hot fudge sauce, omitting milk and
including forbidden ingredients like corn syrup, so I strongly suspect
the R&D department created this recipe in response to my request, which
makes the aspects of tradition and authenticity rather questionable.
(Very refreshing, BTW, to be able to talk about authenticity outside the
SCA milieu!) 

Anyway, Lady Gabrielle later found that an aunt had got the recipe from
her grandmother, and written it down. Here is a fairly good
approximation, as it appears in my son's school cookbook:

> Arkansas Chocolate Gravy -- from Allison Lassieur, aunt of Brennan Troy, K301
> 
> This is a little-known regional specialty from the American South, and is exactly what
> the name says it is. Best made, and washed down, with farm-fresh milk.
> 
> Serves 2
> 
> Combine in a heavy saucepan 3 Tbs cocoa (Hershey's is the preferred brand), about 3
> Tbs sugar, more or less, depending on how sweet you like it, and 1 Tbs flour. Mix 
> thoroughly.
> 
> Into that mixture, add about 1 cup of milk, a little at a time, mixing until smooth. If it 
> ends up being too thick, you can add more milk later to thin it.
> 
> Place the pan over medium heat and bring to a simmer, stirring frequently,
> till thickened. Check for desired thickness and sweetness, and adjust if necessary.
> 
> Remove from the heat, and stir in 1 tsp of vanilla extract.
> 
> Pour over buttered biscuits, and serve with cold milk. Makes about one cup, which is >two servings or so.

I've found that you get a better product, if you're using the usual
supermarket milk rather than the real thing, to make a _lightly_ cooked
roux with 2 or 3 Tbs butter, the flour and the cocoa. Then add the
sugar, mix, and then the milk, and cook like a bechamel sauce. I also
include a tiny pinch of salt. Less authentic, perhaps, but it supplies
the richness you would lose by using the milk in the paper carton. You
may want to tinker with the proportions of cocoa: the gravy should be
bittersweet, and almost black in spite of the milk.

I think you folks are on your own as far as a biscuit recipe goes: I
don't use one, per se.

Good luck, and enjoy this exercise in Interkingdom Anthropology!

Adamantius
- -- 
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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