How to make Gravy

Australia’s Poet Laureate -- Paul Kelly – slips a damn good recipe into his song about some bloke lamenting that he won’t be home for Christmas because he’s in the nick.

His main concern is that no one else can make gravy.

I can emphasise with the protagonist in this instance and it’s not just the gravy.

Being poor as fuck, I make many things old school.

Gravy is just one, but I recall the moment I asked my girlfriend at the time to take care of cooking the rice while I dealt with the chook on the barbeque.

The audible opening and closing of kitchen cabinets preceded the unexpected

‘Where’s your rice cooker?’

After turning the heat down, I walked inside, opened the cabinet door she was standing in front of and retrieved the pot used for cooking rice.

The beautiful look of confusion on her face is something I will never forget.

‘How do I cook rice in this?’ she asked.

Casual Racism takes on a new light when the Taiwanese girl has to ask the Dane-Scot how to cook rice.

We are both Australian, but heritage-wise, it shouldn’t have been me giving the lesson.

Racist!

I can hear the cries already and I welcome them as they only serve to prove a point.

I showed her how the Filipino bloke I went to school with had taught me how to cook rice (you put the rice in the pot, fill it with water to the length of your thumbnail above the rice and cook it on a low-medium heat. Don’t stir it until the water is gone. Serve.) and she was gobsmacked.

The point? You ask.

‘All Asians use rice cookers’ was her respone.

She was a much better cook of European food than I am, and she did that from scratch.

So, making gravy was never a big deal during our relationship. But it has become an issue generally in life.

No one seems to have a fucking clue anymore. Even my parents – who taught me how to cook – use the packet shit these days. I’m not talking about Gravox (which is only one step up) but the crap you put in the microwave.

I can understand The Old Man doing it because he only spends a couple of nights at his place each week and he’s exhausted from work when he does. But when my Mother banged a couple in the wave for the compulsory traditional turkey celebrating the birth of some Jewish bloke, born to a hooker and raised by a dimwit who believed her tale of being rogered by a mythical being, I nearly lost my shit.

It’s one of her favourite times of year so I put up with the carols, the tree and all the other bullshit. But Gravy?

Fuck. It’s a bloody roast, the tray is full of goodness, a bit of flour, some stock and you’re rolling.

This is where I start to empathise with Joe from Uncle Paul’s song. I fucking hate Christmas but old mate seems to like it. A contradiction, yes, but while he laments not being able to see his family, his biggest concern is the gravy.

While stuffing is, of course, essential, it’s gravy that brings the meal together.

Woodie Guthrie mentions “flour gravy” often in his memoir Bound for Glory, so I can’t claim any sort of recognition or fame for knowing The Art. Nor can Paul Kelly or Joe. But Woodie wrote that book around the depression and Germany’s second attempt to rule Europe in the 20^th century.

Those were tough times globally and people needed to know how to feed themselves and how to turn something you can’t eat as it is into something you can. This is where gravy becomes King.

A piece of stale bread becomes edible, boiled vegetables taste like something, and the scraps of meat are softened. These are important things for people who don’t have much.

It isn’t as if I grew up poor, but things did get tight pretty regularly and as a result The Dolmio Grin wasn’t present in our household. I did however learn to make a good spag bog with tomato paste and tinned tomatoes. And other things including cakes, that I made a tidy profit on by not paying for ingredients and selling to my Mother.

It’s slightly more difficult to make money from Gravy but knowing how to do it will save you some. And managing to impress your girlfriend’s parents (different one) by having their daughter willingly eat mushrooms after they had failed for twenty-five years by having better bolognaise than they did earns you things like the secret to making great hamburgers.

Even with the rise and rise of televised cooking shows it seems that the ability to cook a standard meal without some precooked packaged shit in the mix is fading from the average kitchen. Granted, those douchebags over complicate things, but if you trim the fat off, the basics are there.

My go to is easy. Brown some onions, garlic if you want, in a pan, chuck a bit of plain flour in, stir it around while adding stock, add more flour as necessary, followed by stock until you get the consistency and volume you’re looking for.

It’s up to you how to flavour it. Joe’s recipe calls for a ‘dollop of tomato sauce for some sweetness and that extra tang’. This is not bad advice, I would also suggest Worcestershire. Salt, pepper, herbs and spices are all credible additions. Wine also. The possibilities are endless, but it’s easy as shit and takes about as long to make as a microwave gravy takes to heat up.

Once the meat has been removed to rest, a Gravy can be racked up in no time using the same pan or roasting tray. The same can’t be said for White Sauce, but I’ll have to wait for someone to write a song about it before I throw my two bob in.