Additions to the chip-vocabulary contributed the chatline (for which many thanks!) previously unknown to me: poutine (Quebecois), spice bag (Irish-Chinese, very complicated involving fried onions, peppers and curry sauce) and chicken-salt (Australia). 'Gravy' is another. Brown gravy in the UK used to be made with Bisto (school dinners) or 'gravy-granules' (of which I have no experience). My own version of gravy is whatever's gloopy and delicious in the bottom of the roasting tin, sprinkled with a little flour and a scrap of butter and scraped up with a splash of white wine and a good slurp of strong tea from the tea-pot (Lapsang or Earl Grey, since you ask) that contributes a delicate herby flavour and greatly improves the colour. Now you know it all.
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