[Sca-cooks] gravy

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Adamantius talked a bit about gravy.
>>I had an eye round too, but it was massive (purchased by spouse with
>>eyes bigger than stomach), and barded, so fat was more in evidence.

>
>We've talked about larding before. What did you use for your fat 
>source? bacon?

Well, this was barding, which is a little different: think horse 
barding. The meat is essentially wrapped in a thin sheet of fat 
before the roast is tied into shape. The butcher did this; it looks 
like he sliced beef suet (i.e. leaf fat from the kidney area) into 
thin slices, overlapped them just slightly, and allowed the chill of 
the refrigerator and the string for tying the roast to sort of set it 
all in place.

You could do it with bacon, though. Suet, however, has a clearer fat 
with a higher smoke point (this may have to do with the salt-cure in 
the bacon fat; it seems to break it down faster)

>>You'd be surprised, though, how you can get a sort of characteristic
>>eye-round gravy from that cut, even if there isn't enough fat to do
>>the roux thing.
>  <snip of useful info on stretching the meat drippings a bit to make gravy>
>>I have learned from limited, but highly effective, experience, that
>>there seems to be no good commercially prepared gravy.


>The folks at Cook's Illustrated prefer home made gravy, but they 
>concede that sometimes the can version is what has to be used. In 
>these case they recommend the chicken gravy, even in meat dishes. 
>Their taste tests showed it to be a better product. They think it is 
>because the chicken gravy is required by law to have a higher real 
>chicken content than the beef gravies are required to have of real 
>beef stuff.

That may be. I sometimes use chicken stock as the basis for beef 
gravies, too. Using a dark roux, and by the time the drippings from 
the cooked beef (assuming there are some) are added, it becomes a 
pretty dark brown and reasonably beef-flavored. I guess the smallish 
amount of beef flavor goes further than the more neutral chicken 
flavor (and realizing this, and taking it to a ridiculous extreme, 
may be why commercial beef gravies aren't very good).

I sort of question whether the canned stuff is ever necessary, but 
the concept of the chicken version being preferable does make some 
sense in that context. You can also use things like tomato sauce, 
diluted tomato paste, and even, G*d help us, Lutheran Binder (a.ka. 
Cream of Mushroom Soup) in place of canned or jarred gravy. Or in 
addition to cloud the issue a bit.

>Recently you commented on the Europeans considering gravy to include 
>just the drippings and not necessarily creating a roux, where the 
>Americans consider a rouz necessary to call it a gravy.

Hmmm. Until fairly recently (not sure exactly when things clearly 
changed), gravy in England was more like a jus, a concentrated, 
flavorful liquid. It was the drippings from a roast, deglazed from 
the pan with additional juices from the freshly sliced meat, cooked 
together until homogeneous. If this is boiled, and there's a little 
fat left in it, it could achieve an emulsified state and become 
somewhat thick as a result, and remain that way for a short time. 
Gravy was also made by stewing meat (this is separate from, and in 
addition to, the meat you're eating with the gravy) in stock, water, 
or other liquid, until the flavor and gelatin of the meat (maybe a 
veal knuckle) had dissolved into the cooking liquid, which is then 
strained and reduced. This seems to be more like a cooking 
ingredient, a highly flavorful seasoning, rather than a table sauce, 
but you see evidence for it not only in recipes which discuss it, but 
in English cookery terms like gravysoup and gravy meat (a butcher's 
cut, maybe beef shank).

French cooks know about the concept of jus, which is unthickened, 
unless it's reduced until the gelatin content becomes significantly 
concentrated, sort of syrupy. They also thicken stocks with roux to 
make sauces, but these are in the French sauce families such as 
veloute and Espagnole, and so on, and not really thought of as gravy, 
and certainly not made as a byproduct to meat. Almost the reverse, in 
fact. It's no coincidence that the French term for meat stock has a 
common root with the English word, foundation: stock is used in just 
about everything.  This also may have to do with the fact that French 
cooks rarely cook a big hunk of beef (at least not by roasting). In 
fact, the French name for roast beef being rostbif suggests that 
they've kept the name of a basically foreign food. (They also have 
plomboudin and mache-potetos, even though the French language has 
perfectly good words to describe these things, had they felt the 
need.)

>  But when we were looking for examples of period gravy, I thought it 
>was specifially the use of a rouz that we were using as our gravy 
>definition. What we did find was late period, if I remember 
>correctly. So, do we have examples of earlier gravy, but not a roux 
>based gravy?

I seem to recall either Taillevent or Le Menagier having recipes for 
granie (later perhaps corrupted into gravy), seeming to be sauces 
made by thickening cooking liquids for various meats and fish with 
bread crumbs or ground almonds, and possibly named for the frequent 
granular texture of such sauces.

I think perhaps the late period stuff you're referring to may be 
identified as gravy by us, but perhaps not by the original source. We 
may be seeing a sauce thickened with cooked flour, and referring to 
it as "period gravy". Modern French SCAdians might see the same 
source and see it as period veloute. Unless I'm simply wrong and 
missed this entire conversation (quite possible). Was this in 
connection with La Varenne?

>>It all sounds lovely! Hmmm. Leftover roast beef with sour cream
>>horseradish...
>This sounds good. This may be closer to the commercial horseradish 
>sauces I've had. Are you just mixing chopped horseradish and some 
>sour cream together? Or are you pulverizing it together in a food 
>processor? This sounds like it would be a great baked potato 
>topping. (sigh. more carbs. But it might make a good hamburger 
>topping, too)

Actually, since my wife made the last grocery run, and what she 
bought was sour cream and some commercial horseradish (Gold's, finely 
grated with vinegar and salt, maybe some chemo-nasties, but it comes 
in a refrigerated jar), that was it.

Also excellent with cold fish, ranging from poached salmon to cold 
gefilte fish. But it makes a perfectly legit low-carb sauce for 
sliced roast beef or boiled beef, hot or cold. There are plenty of 
other foods you can eat it with, besides potatoes.

Adamantius