Carne Pizzaiola

Thin beef cooked in minutes in a tomato and oregano sauce made first.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef.

Ingredients

• 600 g beef topside or sirloin, in thin slices
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 600 g tinned plum tomatoes, crushed
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon salt
• a handful of parsley, chopped

Method

1. MAKE THE SAUCE FIRST AND FINISH IT. Garlic in the oil for a minute, tomatoes and salt in, simmer 20 minutes until it has thickened and lost its raw edge.
2. Stir in the oregano and cook 2 minutes more. Dried oregano rather than fresh — it is the smell of this dish, and it needs a little heat to open up.
3. Beat the beef slices out thin between paper if they are not already.
4. Slide them into the finished sauce and cook THREE MINUTES, turning once.
5. That is the whole trick and it runs the other way from a braise: the sauce is cooked and the meat is barely cooked. Beef this thin is tough at five minutes and leather at ten, so the sauce cannot be allowed to need more time than the meat.
6. Scatter the parsley over and serve straight from the pan.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes