Mulled Cider Festive Gravy

Mulled cider makes far more sense in a gravy than mulled wine does, because apple and pork belong together anyway. The important thing is to reduce the spiced cider right down first, so you get the perfume without the acidity fighting the stock. It is very good with a pork loin and just as good with turkey.

Ingredients

Makes about 750ml, enough for eight plates

• 500ml (18fl oz) dry cider
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 4 cloves
• 2 strips of orange peel pared with a peeler
• 1 star anise
• 1 tbsp soft brown sugar
• 3 tbsp fat from the roasting tin or butter
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 3 tbsp (45g) plain flour
• 700ml (1 1/4 pints) hot chicken or pork stock
• 2 tsp cider vinegar
• sea salt and black pepper

Kit

• Small pan
• Roasting tin or heavy pan
• Whisk
• Fine sieve

Method

1. Put the cider, cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, star anise and sugar in a small pan and bring to a boil. Reduce it hard, uncovered, for about fifteen minutes until you have around 150ml of dark, syrupy spiced cider. Strain out the spices and set it aside.

2. Rest the meat and pour the fat off the roasting tin down to about three tablespoons, keeping all the residue. Set the tin over a medium heat and soften the onion in the fat for five minutes.

3. Stir in the flour and cook for two minutes until it takes on colour and smells toasted. Keep scraping the base, because the sugars from a pork or turkey tin catch quickly.

4. Pour in the reduced spiced cider and whisk. It will seize into a thick dark paste almost immediately because it is so concentrated. Keep whisking and scraping for a minute until the tin base is clean.

5. Add the hot stock in three additions, whisking each until smooth. Bring it up to a simmer and cook for ten minutes, stirring, until it coats the back of a spoon.

6. Push it through a fine sieve into a clean pan to catch the onion and any stray clove fragments. A whole clove in someone's gravy is a genuinely unpleasant surprise.

7. Add any resting juices and bring back to a simmer for a minute. Sharpen with the cider vinegar, then taste. Spiced gravies fool the palate into thinking they are seasoned when they are not, so check the salt carefully.

Tips worth knowing

• Reduce the cider before it meets the stock, not after. Boiling the whole gravy down to concentrate the cider overcooks the stock and turns the spices harsh.
• One star anise is plenty in 750ml. Two takes over and the whole thing starts to taste like a cough sweet.
• Pare the orange peel with a vegetable peeler and avoid the white pith, which turns the gravy bitter after fifteen minutes of boiling.
• Make the spiced cider reduction days ahead and keep it in a jar in the fridge. It also makes a decent glaze for the ham.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps four days in the fridge and three months in the freezer, cooled fast in a shallow tray. The spice flavour deepens overnight, sometimes too much, so taste after reheating and let it down with stock if it has become dominant. Bring to a rolling boil before serving.

Questions people ask