There are always moments in summer when I am overwhelmed by ripe tomatoes, either that I zealously purchased or that my own vines produced. They are demanding, urgent, precarious; when time is short, I regard them meanly. Yet they are, like so much stale bread or figs splitting at their seams, a problem I love to have. They practically obligate me to make tomato gravy.
One of the South’s many elegant lessons in ingredient economy, tomato gravy, like other Southern gravies, is an exercise in making much out of little. At its most basic, it amounts to tomatoes thickened by fat and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper. In its process, it transforms good tomatoes into something nearly luxurious, the roux rounding and plumping their flavor and giving rise to a rich, satiny sauce.
“Gravy is the great extender,” says Sheri Castle, Southern food writer, cookbook author and reigning gravy authority. In a skillet, it typically picks up where something else left off – a few pieces of bacon or some crumbled sausage, a couple of pork chops or pieces of fish – maximizing both resource and flavor (although it can also be made with reserved renderings or oil).
In tomato gravy there is the potential to add another element of utility, capitalizing on an ingredient that might otherwise go to waste, the way my grandmother would set aside leftover sliced tomatoes – the ones she always peeled before serving with dinner – and made tomato gravy when she had enough.