[Sca-cooks] canned gravy??????
Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius at verizon.net
Sun Dec 28 06:54:07 PST 2003
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
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