Roasted Vegetable Gravy

This is the purest version of vegetable gravy, where the savouriness is nothing but Maillard browning on the vegetables and caramelised tomato puree. Because it is blended rather than thickened with flour, it is naturally gluten free and has a soft, almost velvety texture. It takes an hour, most of which is the oven doing the work.

Ingredients

Makes about 700ml, six good servings

• 3 onions, quartered
• 3 carrots, cut into thick batons
• 1 small parsnip, cut into chunks
• 2 sticks celery, roughly chopped
• 1 bulb garlic, cloves separated and left in their skins
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 900ml (1 1/2 pints) hot vegetable stock use a gluten free stock
• 3 sprigs rosemary
• salt and black pepper

Kit

• Large roasting tin
• Saucepan
• Stick blender
• Sieve

Method

1. Heat the oven to 220C, 200C fan, gas 7. Toss all the vegetables and the garlic cloves with the olive oil in a big roasting tin and season with salt.

2. Roast for 45 minutes, turning everything twice, until the onions have blackened edges and the carrots are wrinkled and deeply browned. You are looking for more colour than you would want on a side dish.

3. Dot the tomato puree over the vegetables, stir it through and return the tin to the oven for six minutes. It should darken and smell sweet and jammy rather than sharp.

4. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and discard the skins. Tip everything into a saucepan, then deglaze the roasting tin with a ladle of hot stock, scraping hard, and add that to the pan too.

5. Add the rest of the stock and the rosemary, bring to a simmer and cook uncovered for 20 minutes so the flavours pull together and the liquid reduces slightly.

6. Fish out the rosemary stalks and blend the whole lot smooth with a stick blender. It will look thick and slightly cloudy, which is right.

7. Push it through a sieve back into the pan if you want a silky finish, or leave it rustic. Stir in the balsamic vinegar, bring back to a simmer and season. If it is too thick, let it down with hot stock a splash at a time.

Tips worth knowing

• Do not crowd the roasting tin. Vegetables piled up will steam and stay pale, and pale vegetables make pale gravy.
• The blackened edges of the onion are flavour, not a mistake. Whole blackened wedges are a mistake, so turn them.
• Sieving takes five minutes and turns a decent gravy into a restaurant one. Press hard with a ladle.
• Check your stock is genuinely gluten free if that matters, since plenty of stock cubes contain wheat as well as celery.

Keeping and reheating

Five days in the fridge, three months frozen. Being flour free it reheats without splitting or going gluey, and it thickens as it cools so add water when warming through.

Questions people ask