Cream Gravy Odyssey

I roasted a chicken last night (because isn't that where good gravies start, some sort of roast?). Mixed a whack of Epicure Herbes des Provence with butter and greased that little 4 pound bird up. I don't remember why but I decided to roast it breast side down and resting on a bed of carrots, celery and onion. Little salt, a little pepper and into the oven for a couple of hours. I even basted the little guy. No pictures because it was really just a roast chicken and we all know what that looks like. I tasted the pan drippings thought and thought that I might take a stab at gravy since it was so tasty.

I've never once had luck with gravy but I have a tendency to wing it with my proportions when I try this stuff because when I saw my mom and grandmother doing it, they didn't measure at all (having, of course, the experience of a thousand collective gravies between them). So I pulled out one of the go-to cookbooks and tried this (sort of, some people never learn).

2 T meat drippings (fat and juices)
2 T flour
1 c liquid (meat juices, broth, water)
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper

Make a roux from the drippings and the flour over medium still smooth and bubbly. Remove from heat, stir in liquid and return to heat until boiling. Boil one minute, season and Bob's your uncle.

Okay, confession time. I used butter and flour for my roux because... just because. I was going to use somewhere between a quarter and a half cup of milk topped up with the tasty liquid in the roaster for my liquid. This would have worked really well if I had one of those measuring cups that has the spout feeding from the bottom of the glass. As it was, the liquid was mostly the fat floating on the top and I was tired of playing with it all so I steamed ahead and ended up with something that looked like a nice cream sauce as long as you were stirring it but didn't look so hot if you just left it alone.

So the fault was mine and not the recipe. I will master gravy, I will. But the chicken was amazing.