[Sca-cooks] gravy

[Carol Eskesen Smith]

I'll try to dig up my recipe for "Stekeys of Beef or Venysoun", made with pan drippings, wine, pepper, and ginger, and served over meat with a sprinkle of cinnamon.  quite good, and I'd consider it a variant of gravy.

Regards,
Brekke
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Stefan li Rous 
  To: SCA-Cooks SCA-Cooks maillist 
  Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2003 11:58 PM
  Subject: [Sca-cooks] gravy


  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?
  > 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.

  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. 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?
  > 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)

  Stefan
  --------
  THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
      Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
  StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
  **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****

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