Yet Another Holy Grail: Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy

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Guess what I did today?  I made the gravy for Thanksgiving!   This recipe does not involve jarred or powdered or canned gravy that you enliven with...with...other stuff.  Rather, this uses actual turkey parts you roast yourself.  Is it cost effective?  Not particularly.  Is it worth every penny?  You bet your sweet bippy.

And yes, it is only November 10, but gravy can be kind of hard--it has to be done at the last minute, and it is subject to the whims of your drippings, your flour, your whisking, and your attention span (and maybe your pre-dinner wine consumption?).  When you are making a multi-course dinner for 11 of your closest friends, making the gravy right before dinner is served tends to be a teensy bit stressful.  Lumpy?  Runny?  Not enough?  The mind reels.  For the last few years I have followed the recipe in Ann Hodgman's Beat This for Chicken Gravy, except I doubled it (we are big gravy fans, and we like gravy with the leftovers, thank you very much) ad libbed it a little bit, and ended up with Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy.  This is a bit time consuming, but think how glad--indeed, how thankful--you'll be that you've freed up all that pre-dinner potato mashing, cream whipping time.

First of all, buy some turkey parts, say up to a month before Thanksgiving.  This time I bought three turkey thighs and three turkey necks (mostly because all they had at Safeway was thighs and necks).  Thighs make a good amount of drippings, and I used the necks for the stock . You could use wings and giblets (not the liver), too, for the stock, or use drumsticks for roasting. See what they have at the store.

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Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.While you get the thighs ready, put 12 Tbl. of flour on a cookie sheet and put in the preheated oven for 8 minutes.  Remove from oven, stir flour to mix the browned and still white flour together, and return to oven for 4 more minutes. Set aside. Place the thighs, skin side up, on a rack in a roasting pan.  Spread them with a little butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put a little water in the bottom of the pan so that the drippings don't smoke and scorch and make your oven messy, to boot. Roast the thighs at 425 degrees for about an hour, maybe a little more, depending on how big they are.

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While the thighs roast, make the stock:  place in a large stock pot the turkey necks, 2 or 3 carrots cut in chunks, 3 sticks of celery in chunks, 3 large onions cut into slabs, 5 whole cloves garlic, peeled, 2 tsp. whole peppercorns, handful of fresh parsley, 1 Tbl. dried thyme, 2 tsp. dried sage, approx. 30 oz. chicken broth (canned is fine!), 4 cups of water, and 3/4 cup vermouth or white wine.  Bring to a boil, then let simmer for a couple of hours.  Skim the scum on the surface if you need to.  Let the stock simmer until reduced by about one-quarter. When it's done, pour the stock and veggies through a sieve into a jug or bowl.  Press down on the veggies to get all the juices out, then discard the veggies.  Keep the stock handy.

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Remove the rack and cooked turkey from the roasting pan.  Place the roasting pan on a low flame on the stove, and start to stir and scrape up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan (the "fond").  If you don't have enough drippings, which happens often, add some canola oil, a little at a time, until you have approximately 10 or so tablespoons of drippings and oil combined.  Increase the heat, keep stirring, and listen for the drippings to start to sizzle.  Using a fine sieve, start to sift in the

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browned flour you made earlier, a few tablespoons at a time, into the drippings, stirring the flour and drippings into a paste.  Keep doing this until you have just about 2 Tbl. of flour left, and reserve the 2 Tbl. of flour.  If you are having a hard time making the paste (the "roux"), you could add a little stock to moisten things up and help make the paste.  When all (except the 2 Tbl.) of the flour has been incorporated, start to add the warm (or hot) stock, a ladleful at a time, to the roasting pan.  Start whisking, making sure to keep the growing gravy moving.  Lower the heat if necessary, and keep adding stock until the consistency is, as Ann

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Hodgman says, gravy-ish.  If it's become too thick, add a little more stock.  If it doesn't seem thick enough, sieve the remaining flour, a little bit at a time, into the gravy, whisking well.  Taste the gravy--more salt? pepper? vermouth? garlic powder? thyme?  Keep tasting til you're happy--you'll know what it needs.

Let the gravy cool, transfer to a freezer-safe container, and freeze until Thanksgiving (I wouldn't freeze it for longer than a month).  Let thaw overnight in the fridge.  An hour or two before dinner, place thawed

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gravy in a saucepan. It may be much thicker now, so feel free to add some canned chicken broth, a little at a time, to thin it.  Heat slowly over low, then medium-low, heat. Taste for seasoning again.  Pour into a warmed gravy boat.  Be thankful.

Funny Ladies

I love being made to laugh.  You don't necessarily have to tell me jokes, although that's good too.  I like a slightly puzzled look at the world, some bemusement in my amusement.  I guess it all just boils down to seeing the funny side of things.  I just finished reading Tina Fey's new (well, only) book, Bossypants. I chuckled a lot and occasionally laughed out loud, like when she talks about puberty and being given the requisite pamphlet "with the vaguely threatening title, 'Growing Up and Liking It.'"  There are a lot of theater camp memories, and family musings, including this one: "How can I give [my daughter] what [my father] gave me?  The gift of anxiety.  The fear of getting in trouble.  The knowledge that while you are loved, you are not above the law.  The Worldwide Parental Anxiety System is failing if this many of us have made sex tapes."

There are bad haircuts and a disastrous honeymoon cruise.  She talks about photo shoots, which really are as glamorous as they seem, and are,  as she says, the FUNNEST.  "Some photographers are compulsively effusive.  'Beautiful.  Amazing.  Gorgeous!  Ugh, so gorgeous!' they yell at shutter speed.  If you are anything less than insane, you will realize this is not sincere.  It's hard to take because it's more positive feedback than you've received in your entire life thrown at you in fifteen seconds.  It would be like going jogging while someone rode next to you in a slow-moving car, yelling, 'Yes!  You are Carl Lewis!  You're breaking a world record right now.  Amazing!  You're going very fast, yes!'"  And then, with the usual foot in reality, it all comes crashing down:  "With the wind blowing on your long extensions, you feel like Beyonce.  The moment the wind machine stops, you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and wonder,'Why is the mother from Coal Miner's Daughter here?'"

There's lots more, all of it interesting and lots of it funny.  She talks about her co-stars through the years, the struggles of women in television and in business in general, she talks about parenting and about the future.  Highly enjoyable.  And she dedicates it to her mother, noting that "I made this for you out of macaroni."

The next funny lady that I love is Ann Hodgman.  Her books are for children, and while sweet and mildly amusing, they don't make me guffaw.  What does tickle me, though, are her recipes.  I have two of her cookbooks, Beat This and Beat That.  The directions for chicken gravy (which, by the way, is do-ahead [woo-hoo!], very good, and also works for turkey) include the following:  "When the stock has reduced enough, pour it through a strainer lined with a clean dishtowel into another saucepan. (If I were you I'd wait til no one was looking and just throw away the dishtowel when I was done with it.)  Check the seasoning.  If there's still lots of time before your chicken or turkey is done, let the stock cool.  If it's time to take the damn thing out of the oven, keep the stock warm.  Transfer the bird to another plate, cover it with foil, and keep it warm. Call out nervously to your guests that everything is fine."  That paragraph alone makes Beat This one of my favorite cookbooks.

Roz Chast's cartoons make me laugh a lot.  The Bad Mom trading cards are my favorite.    Sadly, I have committed several of the sins enumerated herein.

I have books I turn to like I turn to comfort food, and two of my favorite authors are Jean Kerr and Betty MacDonald.  They are exasperated by their families (but there is also no doubt how much they love them) and their annoyance is our gain.  Both are funny ladies.  You may have trouble finding these books--they're old, maybe out of print, but the library should have them. Try and giggle about something today.

Gyro Scope

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Let's see...phonetically, it would be "yeero, " not "jiro."  I'm talking delicious Mediterranean food here, not the toy with the string.  One difference: while lamb is usually the meat of choice for gyros, there are people in my house who are anti-lamb (well, really, pro-lamb, if you want to look at it that way), so I make them with pork (why do lambs get sympathy and not pigs?  I don't know--not my issue).  So ANYWAY, if you can't make it to the Athenian Grill in Suisun City for their gyros, these are pretty darn good.  Yes, they are a bit fiddly to grill, but they are certainly not difficult at all.

I have some notes (of course):  I used to use pork loin for these, but have found that pork shoulder makes for much better, much more flavorful meat.  Loin is too lean and thus too dry.  Slice the shoulder thinly by freezing (or thawing) it to the point where it is still stiff, but soft enough to get the knife through, and you'll be able to slice it thinly so it grills quickly.  You don't get the same effect by marinating and grilling the meat whole, which is why all the bitty work.  The red onion in the tzatziki (the Greek yogurt sauce) can be pretty powerful, so after you chop it, put it in a sieve and rinse it quickly under cold water to lessen the bite a little.

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Pork Gyros

serves 8

2 lbs. boneless pork shoulder, sliced thinly into pieces about 2" x 5"

Marinade:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup lemon juice

2 Tbl. Dijon mustard

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbl. dried oregano

Tzatziki:

2 cups plain Greek yogurt

1 large cucumber, seeded, peeled, and chopped

1 tomato, deglopped and chopped (that's how Ann Hodgman describes seeding and cleaning a tomato--perfect!)

4 Tbl. minced red onion (see note above)

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1 tsp. crushed garlic

1 tsp. dried dill

1/2 tsp. salt

8 - 12 pita breads

Place strips of  pork in a large Ziploc bag.  Combine marinade ingredients and pour over pork.  Marinate for 2 to 8 hours.  Preheat the grill.  While grill preheats, stir together all tzatziki ingredients (not the pitas, obviously) and set aside.  Using tongs, remove all those pieces of pork from the marinade, and place them carefully (to avoid incinerated casualties) on the grill over medium heat.  Close lid and let cook for about 7 minutes.  Raise lid and turn pieces of pork over (sorry--fiddly, I know).  Now you have to babysit the meat for about 5 minutes, moving cooked pieces off the flame, moving thicker pieces to the hotter areas, etc.

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You'll know it's done when you see the juices running, bubbly and clear.

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Let the meat rest on a serving platter, covered with foil, for 10 or 15 minutes, in a warm place.  In the meantime, warm the pita bread, either in the microwave (if it's just family and you're eating right away), or in the oven (wrapped well in foil).  Place a serving of meat on a whole pita (see photo, top) and drape with some of the tzatziki.  Gyros are delicious and remarkably flavorful.  And now here are some of my geraniums, sure to rival any in Greece (well, I assume they grow geraniums in Greece, since they grow so well here in our Mediterranean-like climate, and what with Greece having an actual Mediterranean climate...).