It's fun to say (Steak Pete's-eye-Ole-uh), easy to make and less expensive than it sounds! I discovered steak pizzaiola by watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. I also discovered braciole by watching this show, which I haven't tried yet since it looks kind of hard and messy.
Steak Pizzaiola
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- cooking oil
- 4 small steaks (I used chuck steaks I found on sale)
- 1 large onions
- 2 garlic cloves
- hot cherry peppers (I didn't use these, but I did add a dash of red pepper flakes) (optional)
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 28 oz can or 2 14 oz cans peeled plum tomatoes or diced tomatoes
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- pepper, to taste
Directions
- Heat the cooking oil in a large skillet over high heat. Don't use olive oil at high heat because it scorches and tastes gross.
- Add the steak and brown well on both sides.
- Meanwhile slice the onion and mince the garlic.
- Remove the steak from the pan and reduce heat to medium.
- Add olive oil if you need it, the onion and garlic and cook for about one minute.
- Add the hot cherry peppers, if desired, and then the tomato paste.
- Roughly chop or squeeze the tomatoes and add to the pan along with the spices. The recipe was vague, so I didn't drain the tomatoes, which worked out well.
- Bring to a boil, put the steak back in the pan. Cover and lower to a simmer.
- Cook for 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours until extremely tender. This depends on the amount of meat you have.
We cooked up some pasta to eat with this. It was good!
NOTE: Because you're cooking the heck out of the meat, you can use really tough ie: cheap steaks. The recipe originally said to use one 3 lb steak, but we used 4 quarter-pound steaks (there's only 3 of us after all) so we only needed to simmer it for 45 minutes.
