Garden Gravy

Today I had a paper to finish, so I procrastinated a bit by making gravy from tomatoes from our garden. We have two tomato plants- a cherry and a beefsteak. They are both enormous and, we think, mutant plants, having sent vines throughout our garden and even next door. Anyway, we had a load of tomatoes and have been eating them everyday for a couple weeks. So today, I decided to make gravy that way we could freeze some. I started with the nice harvest in the picture.

Here is what I did (as always, click on the picture for a close-up and the back button to return here):

In a fairly large pot, boil water, core the large tomatoes (but don't chop them) and place them in the boiling water. Wait til the skin breaks, remove them and with tongs pull the skin off. Throw the tomato in a bowl.


Wash all the cherry tomatoes and chop them in a food processor- leave somewhat chunky.

Chop up a bunch of onions, garlic, and basil (also from garden) and sautée it all in olive oil in the pot you plan to use to simmer the gravy.


When this mix is starting to brown, add the skinned and chopped tomatoes. Add salt, some sugar, oregano, thyme, and whatever else you like. We added grated parmesan cheese. I also added Aunt Marie's secret ingredient.



I simmered it for about 1hour, reducing the water content by about 50%. In the end it was great, and made about two normal jars of gravy.

~Dominic

UPDATE: This article from the Inquirer has some great recipes for your bounty of late summer tomatoes.