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Now set the sauce-slathered steaks onto a cutting tray and slice them into small strips. Plate the pasta for each guest or family member and lay a nice portion of the steak pizzaiola atop it. Just for decadent kicks, add a little more sauce to each. (No one will complain, I promise you. It’s delicious!) Though steak pizzaiola isn’t traditionally served with it, I like to top it with a little parmesan cheese at the end. The dish will serve six people. Advanced-Level Steak Pizzaiola About that pasta: If we are going for easy — 30 minutes from start to plating — buy it dry from the pack and boil it. If, on the other hand, you are looking to turn this dish into something Instagram-worthy — something about which you can boast to your friends as to how hard you worked on it — you can make the pasta yourself. Yes, this is some- thing you can do! You will need a pasta maker. Wait, don’t recoil in horror! Pasta makers are not extravagant luxuries out of your price range. Like any other appliance, you can find them anywhere in a range from $20 to to $2,000. Find the one that makes your checkbook happy. (And once you try one, you will never go back.) To make things easier, you will also want to get a pasta drying rack, which will run about $10. Here is how you make pasta from scratch. Clear and clean your workspace as though you are about to make bread (because the process isn’t all that different). Pour onto your surface a heaping scoop of all-purpose flour — it’ll work out to about two cups — and make a sort of “nest” out of it. Depending on the number of guests you will be serving, crack three to five eggs and add them to the center of the nest. Carefully scramble them a bit inside the nest, and then begin incorporating the walls of flour nest into the center until you form something of a dough. The key here is to get the pasta dough to the correct consis- tency. Not too firm, not too soft — otherwise the pasta machine will gobble it up and leave you with quite a mess to clean. No, what you are looking for is a slightly firm Play-Doh. Keep kneading the dough until it reaches a consistency in appearance, texture and firmness. If you find it is too dry, add a little olive oil. If you find it is too gooey, add more flour. Keep kneading, and when you hit that firm Play-Doh bull’s-eye, shape the dough into a ball and wrap it in cellophane. (The ball will be about four inches in diameter. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is.) Stick the wrapped dough in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes. (If you are preparing this pasta for steak pizzaiola, get going on the sauce prep while the dough is resting in the fridge.) When it’s time to turn dough into pasta, remove your tasty ball of Play-Doh from the fridge, remove it from the

o be honest, we got the idea from the TV show Everybody Loves Raymond. If you’ve never watched it, the family matri- arch, Marie, always cooks Italian dishes, and I noticed that she kept bringing up the same recipes again and again — things like steak pizzaiola and braciole. If you

love to cook (as I do) and you watch enough episodes (as I have), at a certain point you just have to look these recipes up and see what all the fuss is about. Steak pizzaiola, it turns out, is worth all the fuss. It is a beginner-level recipe with Michelin Star-level results. It takes virtually no prep work and can be served in 30 minutes flat — from placing a pot on the stove through plating your new Italian dream dish. Here is how you make it. Start your stopwatch…now. First: Stir together two cans of Rouses Italian-spiced petite cut tomatoes and one jar of Rouses arrabiata sauce in a pot. Add garlic-infused olive oil to the sauce and sprinkle red pepper flakes sufficient to satisfy a Southern palate. Now all you do is heat on medium-low and stir. (As you cook, remember: This is an Italian dish! You need to be bold, buoyant and boisterous when standing behind the stove! Just add that oil and seasoning until it feels right.) One thing I like to do is add a little sugar to the sauce to cut the acidity. Again, you can just eyeball it, but I gener- ally use about a half-teaspoon. Let it cook for just under a half-hour, stirring occasionally. If you really want to break the ingredients down, you can even go for twice as long. No matter what, however, you are cooking it low and slow. If you plan to use store-bought dry pasta (fettuccini works great with this dish), the next step is to drop enough for everyone into a pot of water and bring it to a boil. While the sauce is simmering, and the pasta working, get started on the steaks. This step is just as easy as the previous two. Take your preferred cuts of steak, room temperature, and apply garlic-infused olive oil, salt and pepper to both sides of each. Add a little oil to a skillet large enough to hold your steaks and bring the tempera- ture high enough that when you add the steaks, you know you’ll get a nice sizzle. Just before dropping the steaks, however, dust them with a bit of flour. Add the steaks to the skillet and brown both sides. You are aiming for a pink or red center, which means at a high heat, shoot for five to six minutes, on average, per side (depending on the thickness of your steaks). When the steaks are ready, the sauce and pasta should both be about there, too. With the steaks still in the skil- let, pour the red sauce on top of them and give the new friends a moment to make each other’s acquaintance.

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