Gravy - Artform and Austerity Weapon

At first blush there is nothing austere about a rolled rib of beef joint that cost £25. And very delicious it was too. But the gravy that accompanied it is another matter.

Our national inferiority complex about food has, happily, been weakened over the last two or three decades. We still tend to think though of e.g. French sauces as things of artistic beauty, and dismiss gravy as very basic and unworthy of consideration. Nonsense, a well made gravy is a joy. It lifts the potatoes that go with a roast, and moistens the meat if it needs that treatment. Given the basis is what you scrape off the roasting dish it gladdens the austerity heart too.

I cheat a bit, using a tsp of Bovril to add extra meatiness. Yesterday's version had a cm of white wine left from the previous day to loosen the thickened juices and de-glaze the dish, then some vegetable water, and included a finely chopped shallot for some texture. For me, though the meat was very good (farm shop, a proper mature brown not pink), the gravy and mash were the best bit of the meal.

Later in the week I'm going to do bangers and mash. Again a gravy will make the thing moist and interesting, and as it will be onion gravy an extra vegetable will be smuggled in - my onion gravy involves very slow melting of four or five finely chopped onions until they start to caramelise. It takes a good 25 minutes or more, but it's worth the wait. Thickened thereafter with plain flour, then made into a luscious liquid with potato water and that magical tsp of Bovril added to give extra flavour, it's not far off very thick French onion soup by the end.

Six fat 'taste the difference' sausages from Sainsbury's cost £2 the other day; spuds for the mash maybe 50p; onions 25p; with in all likelihood peas and steamed carrots for more veg the lot will come to at most £3.25 for three of us. Which makes £25 for the beef joint a little less painful (though it must be said the leftover meat will make hot beef sandwiches tonight - my own bread, some lettuce and cucumber piled on top, thin raw onion rings, and a knife full of mustard). And just one slice saved for another day will make a starter of lentil and beef salad with gherkin and raw onion chopped in, so the £25 does stretch to three meals).

Battered but Unbeatable

On Monday we had a Man vs Food meal - I had a lot of leftover roast beef from the weekend, and a hot beef sandwich with the trimmings seemed like a good idea - it meant we got to use up the gravy too, and was something done quickly when time was not on my side.

A good pig-out is fun on occasion. I had bought some oven chips (sinful) that had been in the freezer for a while and needed using, so they went on the menu. A few batons of carrot and cucumber and some spring onions were a tiny gesture to health, the BBQ beans probably less so. The meal needed another element to fill it out, so I decided to make onion rings from scratch.

A few weeks back I did a cookery school piece for Lancashire Life, Norman Musa at Ning in Manchester showing a bunch of us how to make Malaysian street food. One of the dishes was a fritter made with beansprouts, prawn and Chinese chives. Norman's batter mix was incredibly simple (and for the austerity cook nice and cheap): five tbsps of plain flour, one of self-raising, a tsp of salt and another of turmeric, beaten with water to a thick cream consistency. It worked then, and a variation on it (less turmeric, some of the salt replaced with celery salt) made excellent onion rings, fried in about 1cm of oil in a small frying pan.

Frying stuff is not of course terribly healthy, but it got another vegetable into us, and just as importantly it made the meal fun - crunchy is good.

Talking about Man vs Food, SC posed a very interesting question the other day. Why do we in Britain have loads of fast food chains, but none of the mom-and-pop joints you see on Adam Richman's programme? Places where you can get a great burger without the plastic palace experience of MacDonalds? Where they do filler-upper cooking that pleases. When I travelled on business in the USA in the 90s those were the places that were great, restaurants owned by and run for families. Cheap-end chains were awful, high-end restaurants worse - why do the Americans love that whole 'The Maitre d' will insult you now' thing? But little burger and rib diners where you could eat well for not very much, and in a good friendly atmosphere too, were priceless.

Hot Under the Covers - Sandwiches as Art (And One Flame Opportunity)

San Francisco 1979

It wasn't as if I had never eaten a hot sandwich before going for the first time to the USA, but then again it was. Our sausage sandwich (Danny Baker's Saturday morning programme on Radio 5-Live reviving its fortunes), or bacon butty are all very good, but the Americans do the thing so much better. Which also means bigger.

The hot sandwich is of course a one flame cooking opportunity par excellence, and something that surely fits the austerity bill.

Travelling on Greyhound buses with an old school-friend, though by that time we were university students, covering vast distances with diners and bus-stations the only options at times to grab a quick bite, burgers quickly lost their attraction. An alternative on one menu was a chicken sandwich, duly ordered. I expected two slices of white bread with some dry chicken. I got a stack of moist chicken, salad, pickles, a serving of fries, some onion rings and some nicely toasted bread, if memory serves. A meal in itself, and it even had vitamins and fibre!

A Now Sad Reminder of a First Visit to New York

Further discoveries on that trip and others were the Philly cheese steak and the hot corned beef sandwich (is that the Reuben if it comes with sauerkraut?). Whether on a round roll, a sub roll, toast or bread the hot sandwich can be a wonder - and a rather blokey wonder too.

Last night with my wife returning late Sternest Critic and I had a simple steak sandwich, Topside from Waitrose a bit tough but very toothsome, with a couple of slices of bacon left in the pack from the weekend on top, mayo on mine, a thin onion slice or two, wholemeal bread, and a side salad (authentically with Iceburg lettuce, the least-worst looking in the supermarket) the meal was on the table in minutes, and very satisfying. The steaklets were I think £3.50 for 3, the third in the fridge to be part of a Chinese dish tonight), so it was not too expensive.

Ian and I up the empire State Building

 Man v Food has highlighted the joys of such simple feasts, though tending to gluttony too often. Some of the sandwiches Adam Richman gets to eat look magnificent, and the culinary tip (subject of a recent post) you pick up from the top places making such things is use the pan juices, don't waste that flavour. Some dip the entire sandwich in a pan of stock/cooking liquid.

I'll buy the steaks again, but next time slice them thinly post-cooking to build up some structure, make it easier to attack, and create some spaces for mayo to fill and to hold the pan-juices better.