[Sca-cooks] canned gravy??????

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>
>I'm not *that* bad, although figuring out how to seperate the grease 
>from the drippings is something I still need to work on. I probably 
>end up with more grease than I should.

There are a number of chef-ey, sorta-kinda dynamic hand movements 
that cover this (it's hard to explain; I could try, but the only sure 
way is to show you). Other ways to stack the deck in your favor are 
to transfer all the liquid drippings into a tall container, so the 
fat rises to the top in a deeper, but more narrow, layer. Always use 
a bright light so you can see what you've got. There are gizmos like 
small pitchers that are made for separating fats from water-phase 
liquids, but often there's not enough dripping to make them really 
effective (maybe if you have a turkey). One solution would be to make 
the gravy and then skim _that_. And then there's the old trick with 
the paper towel: once you've spooned or skimmed away all the fat you 
can remove with your spoon or ladle, tear a paper towel or piece of 
brown paper into inch-wide strips, and drag each strip across the 
surface to soak up the last of the fat (this is a classic trick for 
skimming consommes). The strip will also soak up some of the 
water-liquid, but since the fat floats on top, you'll get that first, 
and experience will tell you when to stop.

If you have a lot of liquid (say, a pot of stock), the place to start 
would be to use a ladle. You submerge the bowl of the ladle about 
half-way (so the ladle doesn't fill) beneath the surface of your 
liquid, then revolve it in a spiral from the center (you can recite 
the bit about fire burning and cauldron bubbling at this point; it 
breaks the monotony). You'll find, if you do it right, that the fat 
will all be pushed away from the center of the liquid, to form a ring 
around the edge of the pot. You then skim that (quickly). Repeat as 
needed. But again, you need a fair amount of liquid for that to be 
effective.

As for the old line about chilling until the fat solidifies on top, 
well, it's not hugely practical in this type of situation.

And sometimes, your best and only friend is patient persistence.

And then Stefan whinjed in a most Gollum-y way, because he wants his 
preciousss gravies, oh, yessss ;-) :

>But if I want chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes, how do I get 
>gravy for the mashed potatoes? Actually for both of them. Especially 
>if it is a frozen chicken-fried steak. Sometimes a good slice of 
>Swiss cheese will work on the C.F. steak, but that usually isn't 
>what I want on my mashed potatoes.

Doesn't frozen C.F. steak come with gravy? Or are we talking about 
bulk packages of this item, and not a TV dinner? I've only seen the 
latter, but a big ole box containing a dozen chicken-fried steaks and 
nothing else may be a Texas thing I haven't encountered locally.

Wait a minute: isn't the precioussss usually served with chicken 
fried steak usually a [nominally] cream gravy? With just a hint of 
meat flavor? It seems to me that if you wanted a reasonably 
significant amount (say, a pint, in case there are biscuits too), you 
could use the steak grease (augmented with butter if necessary) to 
cook a tablespoon of flour for a few seconds, then hit it with 
something like canned beef stock and milk and/or cream, and get a 
better and more appropriate product than you can find in a jar, for 
not a lot more additional effort.

I, of course, wouldn't dream of cooking such coarse food for myself. 
Instead I eagerly await opportunities to visit sleazy diners and 
truckstops (this not being, as far as I know, a New York or New 
Jersey food item, but still happily gnawed by truckdrivers from the 
South and West of the country, even in NY and NJ) on the Jersey 
Turnpike and eschew the burgers in favor of Chicken-Fried Death By 
Cholesterol. All right, I lied. I like CF steak (and so does my lady 
wife), but to be honest, it's an incredible pain getting the kitchen 
clean again after I fry anything, so I might do something like that 
once a year or so. If I could get a decent frozen product that wasn't 
a mislabelled, batter-dipped hamburger, I'd probably buy it.

>For Thanksgiving we did have a good giblet gravy, but my 
>mother-in-law doesn't put hard boiled eggs in hers, ehich I like. 
>And there really wasn't that much and it ran out long before the 
>leftover turkey did.

You know, I don't seem to recall having heard of this one before. I 
assume, though (and have seen this in other contexts, such as sea 
turtle cookery) that it would be reasonable for someone processing an 
egg-laying female for the table to include any unlaid eggs among the 
giblets. I wonder if that's where that idea comes from.

On a mostly unrelated note, I started to go into this last night in 
my scholarly discourse on gravy ;-), but seem to have omitted my 
major point: I wonder if the fact that American gravies seem at times 
to resemble a fusion of English gravy and French sauces may be due to 
the work of Creole cooks, possibly slaves or ex-slaves, trained 
with/by/as French or Creole cooks, ultimately passing the traditions 
on to other American households in various ways.

Adamantius