It has to be real.

  Superbly, the celebrations of my birthday still linger on and today the last glowing embers gave off their final warmth in the shape of an absolutely cracking Sunday roast courtesy of my sister. Unfortunately I was too distracted to take pics but I'm happy to report it was a very fine version of the full monty, including a massive bird to feed the many around the table.

​​​​​​​  As much as I tried to remain in guest mode, as we got closer to serving up I could feel myself getting drawn further in to the action. Fortunately I managed to limit my involvement to some almost imperceptible delegation. Then, with just minutes to go before we sat down, I enquired about the gravy. There wasn't any. Horrors!

  There's a possibility that if I was hooked up to an ECG, the slight raise in my heartbeat would have registered, but otherwise my demeanour remained outwardly calm. "Let me take care of it", I said breezily, "do you have any wine?" I reached for an onion, knife and chopping board and put the onion ribbons into a saucepan to fry and soften.​​​​​​​

  In a way the timing was perfect, the bird needed to rest for a bit and this gave enough time to rustle up a little golden nectar. Once the chicken was out of the roasting tray the tin was set over a flame, the softened onions added to the cooking juices and then in went the wine. Scraping the roasting tin with a wooden spoon and stirring loosened all the good flavours and let them melt in. Adding a bit of water helped make sure there would be enough gravy and some cornflour gave the desired thickness.

  As a final touch, while the rampaging monsters, (nephews), were corralled into their seats, a touch of honey was drizzled in as well as a drop of balsamic to get the warmth and acidity bang on. Even after I'd finished a generous portion of roast, I kept finding things to mash onto my plate to soak up any spare gravy. I'm so stuffed there's a good chance I'll not need to eat until late Wednesday but it was worth every phenomenal mouthful but most importantly it was a proper, homemade gravy. Ta to my sis for a scrumptious celebration.

Kirk out

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