Super Bowl of Gravy

Sports fans all have their different, yet individually unique end-of-season finale. Football has The Super Bowl, baseball has The World Series, soccer has The World Cup, and so on and so on. But for us foodies, we have Thanksgiving. We wait all year to wow our friends and family with an extravigent array of foods stemming from some form of a historical version or interpretation if what we think the settlers had after that first years harvest. Our food magazines start coming in September, tempting us with pictures of pumpkin pie, new casseroles made with wild rice, seeds, and different varieties of squash. We start to salivate, picturing something a little like that on our table. Y'all know that I hardly follow recipes, but I do love to see what others are cooking. I take ideas and turn them into things that I want to eat. I imagine the flavors, then I imagine a few of them changing. I can "see" what it will taste like if I make a little change here and a little change there. 

My mom didn't have any of her Thanksgiving recipes written down. At least not that I've found anywhere. My sister may have them, but I honestly don't know. So each year for my Thanksgiving, I just go in blind and try to recreate what my taste bugs remember from childhood. What I would love to have is her dressing recipe written down. I try every year to match what she use to do, and I have yet to get it right. It was cornbread and buscuits. Sautéed carrots, onions, and celery with homemade turkey stock. There as a lot of sage, rosemary, and thyme but I don't know the exact proportions. 

I also enjoy adding new dishes each year. Things that I see on Food Network, or read about in a magazine. I found a cranberry sauce recipe a few years ago that included pears and ginger. I loved it! I grew up with both cranberry sauce, and another cranberry dish that we called cranberry relish. We used the meat grinder to grind cranberries, oranges, and apples, then mixed them all together, added sugar, and let it sit over night. It was my job, since it didn't require cutting or the stove/oven. Mama would cut and core the apples for me, and cut the oranges so they fit into the grinder. This year, I'm thinking I'll make a mixture of the two. I usually make both, and we have way too much. I don't have a meat grinder, so into my food processor, I'll pulse the cranberries and then dump them into a bowl. I'll zest the oranges, then put the sections into the processor to get a good pulse/chop as well. Mama use to do the whole orange, but it think the pith makes it bitter, so I'll take an extra step and zest, then get the sections out separately. This will allgo into the bowl as well. Then the apples will have their turn in the processor. I'll do the pear the same way as the apple, then I'll put a piece of "ginger in syrup" into the processor as well. After everything is chopped nicely and stirred happily in their bowl, I'll add sugar to get to the perfect stage of tart and sweet. 

I'll also be making a batch of gluten free stuffing/dressing, by making gf cornbread and other breads as it's base. I don't think there is such a thing as too much dressing, and to be honest, the dressing and gravy are all I'm after on Thanksgiving. Yeah, the turkey is supposedly the "star", but on my plate, I put the things that assist in getting gravy into my mouth with the least amount of embarrassment. I honestly have anxiety about going to other families homes for Thanksgiving because I know there won't be enough gravy. I could sneak some into a flask, and smuggle it in. And by flask, I mean a 5-gallon Gatorade dispenser. 

Play with your recipes and your food. You might just like it.

Email theft

My dad and aunt and I talk about food ... A LOT. We pass recipes and ideas back and forth all the time. My aunt is great at following recipes, my dad is constantly making chili and thinking that each batch is the best yet, and I open jars until I smell something that speaks to me. I'm an emotional cook and emotional eater. I cook to eat, so the two kinda go hand-in-hand. 

That being said, today's blog post is almost a direct steal from what I wrote to them this morning. I may tweak a word or two here and there to make it more PC... Or not. We'll see how I feel as I re-read it...

To set the scene... Daddy wrote to me this morning about yesterday's stew recipe on the blog. He mentioned that he hadn't thought of using the balsamic to deglaze... Here's where the email that I wrote back to him starts...

I mixed the vinegar into a large drinking cup of water. I don't recommend putting the vinegar straight into the hot pan. You'll get gassed with the fumes.

I also made a pan of gluten free cornbread. Have I told you that I've discovered sweet corn bread? It's at least 1,000 times better than the dry crap we had when I was grow. The dry crap is ideal for stuffing/dressing, but for stuffing ones face, sweet is the way to go. Conner couldn't get enough. Can you believe I BAKED?? AND "followed" a recipe? Followed, meaning I kinda paid attention to the quantity and variety of the ingredients, and oven temp. I added honey for the sweetness, and I cooked it in a hot buttered cast iron, because the morons who wrote the recipe said to use a square baking pan. What a Jack-Ass!

I also made a roux to thicken the stew. It didn't thicken it enough to matter, so I really only added calories for no reason. Anyway, I've discovered that "browned butter" roux makes a KILLER gravy. We had oven roasted chicken the other night. Again with onions and baby carrots. It was ORIGINALLY a very healthy meal, with the chicken and roasted veggies. But then my beautiful blue-eyed 5 year-old asked if we could have "grabey". Sure. Why not. I'll make him some "grabey". He's kinda scrawny, he can use a little extra. Then my handsome blue-eyed (almost) 42 year-old excitedly asked for rice too. Well, shit. I can ignore gravy, but rice AND gravy? I'm not that strong.

So, in a sauce pan, I melted 2 tablespoons of butter, and watched the milk solids toast to a golden brown. (There are few things in this world as wonderful as browned butter.) I then added 2 tablespoons of a gluten free flour blend and made the roux. I let that cook a little bit to slightly darken as well, then I poured in all the pan drippings from the chicken. Remember, it was cooked with the onions and carrots, and I poured about a glass worth of Chardonnay in the pan pre-cooking, too, so this was dreamy good pan juices. (The pan was your basic 9x11x2 glass Pyrex.)

Holy effing awesome! I only made 1 cup of rice, because I knew if there was more, we'd EAT more. It was as close to Mama's fried chicken gravy as I've had in YEARS! 

So there you have a quick glimpse into the world of Saucy and her kin-folk. The family that foods together stays together. As always, stay hungry and remember to play with your food.

Me and my Daddy when I was about 4. Picture taken by my Aunt.