Vegetarian Gravy

I’m all for positive thinking, but Miles Davis never tasted last night’s attempt at caramelized onion gravy. Andrew tried to make me feel better. “Easy for him to say. Make a mistake in jazz and no one can tell.”

But food? Sorry, Kerry, I have failed you. You asked for mushroom-free, non-pureed, vegetarian gravy and instead of improvising like a culinary jazz cat, I fumbled about like a tone deaf violinist wearing oven mitts. Okay, so Miles Davis played trumpet. But I can’t think of a wind instrument punch line that doesn’t involve crude references to bodily functions, so let’s move onto my other inadequacies.

Despite scouring every cookbook and food reference manual in my library:

1: I missed the obvious nomenclature issue. As Dana McCauley pointed out to me twice (once on Twitter and once in the comments section), vegetarian gravy is an oxymoron. If it’s vegetarian, it’s a sauce. Nice catch, Dana.

2: I forgot a basic rule of dairy. When I turned to classic French sauces — béchamel, béarnaise, hollandaise, Mornay or velouté — cream, butter and egg yolks defied the low-fat mandate. A word to the wise: Don’t try to cut calories by using yogurt. It will curdle.

3: I couldn’t find the right balance. My attempts at a sauce based on caramelized onions resembled French onion soup boiled dry. Fiddling with various amounts of butter, balsamic vinegar, red wine, fresh rosemary and vegetable stock couldn’t save it. Too much onion. Not enough sauce. I could have salvaged it (and my reputation?) with cream or crème fraîche, but then again, the low-fat criteria would go straight out the window.

Fortunately, my readers are better versed at this meatless sauce-making than I am. If you can ignore of the term “gravy”, these all strike the perfect note.

• Stephanie of Wasabimon combines pureed soft tofu with Bragg’s and a little soy sauce. If needed, she thins the sauce with vegetable broth and kicks things up with some dijon mustard.
• Cheri Sicard of Fabulous Foods recommends her Thanksgiving worthy vegetarian gravy recipe.
• Leila ups the ante with a vegan gravy even her meat-loving brother couldn’t resist. It does contain mushrooms, but only 5 or 6, so that shouldn’t break the bank.
• Cari Snell responded to Dana’s challenge to do something with miso and provided a recipe. See the comments section for a sauce straight from Vancouver’s oldest natural foods restaurant, The Naam.

Having wrung the life out of the music metaphor, I’m off to Canada Blooms. When it comes to flowers, Davis is right. There are no mistakes.

Photo © plindberg. Published under a Creative Commons License.