Last weekend, Mr. Bourne went home to southwest Virginia for a visit with his family. During a call over the weekend, Mr. Bourne advised me that he had purchased a head of cabbage. When he returned to Charlottesville, he brought with him the largest head of cabbage I had ever seen. He showed me the cabbage and proudly declared that we would be having "soul food" one night this week. I knew the cabbage would take quite a while to prepare, so I decided to have soul food night on one in which he would be home later. This ended up being on Wednesday. We rarely have "soul food" and I wanted it to be a special experience. I immediately started planning what I wanted to prepare. Soul food night isn't one of the healthiest. I don't feel too guilty about that being that we do it so infrequently. I decided that we would have fried pork chops, fried cabbage with bacon, and refrigerator biscuits.
Wednesday morning I made my daily phone call to Mr. Bourne on the way to work. I started singing my daily song to him, but something was wrong. He usually laughs at my terrible singing. Since when had he become a music critic? I asked what was wrong, but he just said it was nothing. Feeling hurt that he didn't want to share what was truly wrong, I abruptly ended the conversation. Great...my morning was starting off just great. You see, when Mr. Bourne is in a good mood, it tends to put me in a good mood too. I have less to worry about when all is well with him. I wrote Mr. Bourne an email when I got into my office to tell him that if he wanted to talk about whatever was wrong, that I was there for him. He eventually said that he was just in a bad mood, had a lot to do, and was dreading the long work day ahead of him. Having resolved that, I decided to do something special for him. I added something to my soul food menu--sweet potato casserole!! For many years, Mr. Bourne and I celebrated Thanksgiving at home in Charlottesville. In recent years, we have gone out of town on the holiday and therefore my sweet potato casserole hardly ever sees the light of day. I knew this was going to do the trick and make his bad day improve by 100%.
Long story short, the meal was great. Everything was perfect. But, there was one particular part of the meal that I'm the proudest of. The gravy. I've never been able to successfully make "pan gravy". I can use a mix to make gravy. I can open a jar or can and heat up someone else's gravy. I have never been able to make my own gravy. Just like homemade biscuits, edible homemade gravy had eluded me...until this past Wednesday. For about two hours I sat at the computer researching how to make gravy. After looking at countless recipes online, I took the most common features and did a mash-up to experiment with. First of all, I would start by frying the pork chops (which were coated in a rub consisting of Cajun seasoning, garlic powder, and paprika and then coated in flour). I fried the pork chops in EVOO on medium high heat until they were golden brown on each side and then removed them from the pan. It was now or never. I lowered the heat just slightly, took a deep breath, and sprinkled enough flour in the bottom of the pan to coat it. I put in about 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter and moved it around in the pan with the spatula until it melted. Then I started the process that I had always failed at. I started scraping the bottom of the pan to mix the butter, flour, and left over drippings and bits from the fried pork chops (fancy folks call those bits of leftover stuff "fond"). From my research I learned to mix the ingredients around for two minutes. I don't know if you've ever really evaluated two minutes before, but it really can seem like a long time depending on the situation. I put Mr. Bourne in charge of keeping track of the two minutes, yet I asked him over and over if it had been two minutes. As if there was some magic going on, at about two minutes the concoction in the pan started to turn brown. This was something I had never been able to do before. My attempts at gravy had always left me with this terrible, floury, nasty gunk in the pan. But, not this time. This time everything was going great. Once the flour, butter,"fond" concoction started turning brown, I put in about 1/2 cup of white cooking wine. With the liquid in the pan, the ingredients started to bubble a little and thicken. I got nervous because I could see that there wasn't enough liquid. I put about 1 cup of water in a measuring cup and started to add a little bit at a time until it was the consistency of gravy..REAL, ACTUAL gravy!!! I put in a can of drained mushrooms and continued mixing.
I know this is going to sound corny, but I think I wanted to cry when I looked into that pan and I saw what was unmistakeably a mushroom gravy. I hadn't tasted it at this point, but it looked like the real thing, at least. This was the farthest I had ever gotten to having my "gravy" actually look like gravy. We plated up everything and I waited for Mr. Bourne to try the pork chops and gravy. I HAD DONE IT!!!! It was great. The white wine and mushrooms took my gravy to an entirely different level of goodness. I remembered every single detail of what I did so I could recreate it in the future.
OK...big deal, right? Why yes it is. There are a few reasons I told this story. I have tried and tried over the years to make gravy. Perhaps the planets were just aligned perfectly on Wednesday. I don't know. All I know is, I did it this time. Had I given up, I would have never known the satisfaction of making something so delicious. Although gravy is a simple thing to make, I had never been able to do it correctly. This time I did. How many times have you tried and tried only to fail and get discouraged about something? Did you give up or keep on trying? If you gave up, you may be missing the one time when it all falls into place, whatever works, you succeed, and learn the lesson that all of the trials were leading up to. Gravy may seem like a trivial thing to most. But, as my LONG tale shows, sometimes the little things mean so much. I have been smiling from ear to ear about this gravy. It was a small accomplishment, but a significant one to me. My gravy failures have been intertwined with so many other things. When I couldn't make that gravy over the years, I thought something was wrong with me. It's gravy for goodness sake! Something must have been wrong with me if I couldn't mix flour, water, and greasy bits together correctly. What I learned is that it was my patience that was being tested. That two minutes of mixing seemed like an eternity when waiting for something to work or not. In the past, those two minutes broke me. This time I saw how important it can be to be patient- great things can happen if you are. The last reason I wanted to tell this story is to share the recipe for making gravy. I know a lot of people my age who have no clue how to cook. Many of them don't know how to make some of the basic things. I think we get so bogged down in the failures that we are afraid to try. It's easier to pop open a can or jar than to watch a lumpy mess in a pan not even pretend to be gravy. It's hard on ones self esteem to fail. Successful cooking can be a real ego booster. To know that you can take care of yourself by cooking your own meals is empowering. As I learn, I'm going to pass this knowledge on through this blog. If nothing else, you all now know how to make gravy!
