About My Gravy

I often have friends round for Sunday dinner. They’re jolly affairs that last for hours with conversation that is lubricated by liberal quantities of wine and beer. I like to lay on a good spread and usually serve up a joint of beef, roast potatoes and parsnips, plenty of greens, Yorkshire puddings and gravy.The latter has become something of a talking point during the meals. Everyone comments on what a fine gravy it is, how gravy is the making of a meal and that my gravy really makes it. This is all very flattering and I must admit I soak up the praise poured on me like a particularly plump and smug Yorkshire pudding. My friends have said that they haven’t tasted gravy as good outside a restaurant. This is rather surprising since my gravy making skills are somewhat haphazard. I don’t tell the guests but my recipe for gravy varies from dinner party to dinner party depending on what’s to hand in the kitchen. Because I have decided to confess to being a sauce sham I noted down the ingredients of the last gravy I made. Into a two pint jug of boiling water I haphazardly bunged: two Oxo cubes, a spoonful of Bisto, the meat juices from the pan the beef was cooking in, a boiled sweet ( a barley sugar, I think), a splish of mustard, a slosh of red wine, a dash of gin, and a slug of lager at the bottom of the tin I was drinking, a few splashes of Worcester sauce, some chopped up onions that had roasted with the beef, salt, pepper, more red wine and a load of corn flour. I then poured my marvellous beef medicine back into the roasting tray, placed it on the hob and stirred it all in. I think I then added some more wine. As I say the recipe changes every time - once I put in a spoonful of Gentleman’s relish (anchovy spread) - but one constant, surely, is that this dreadful boozy concoction is no relation to gravy and could guarantee to render any proper chef foaming at the mouth and into a fit on the kitchen floor. I’m sure I could make proper gravy, there are recipes out there, but I like the spontaneity of it, the idea that one addition too many could potentially ruin an otherwise perfectly good meal. And, like I say, my friends rave about it, so why make them any more the wiser?