Pizzaiola: How to add pizza flavor to just about anything

Pizzaiola is Italian for pizza-style tomato sauce. Sounds straightforward, right? Well, the recipe certainly is. It usually starts with chopped tomatoes cooked with olive oil, a little garlic, a pinch of salt, and some dried oregano. That's it.

Why hadn't I heard of this dish until recently? After all, I've been obsessed with pizza for years and can name innumerable styles, regional variations, and cooking techniques. Why hadn't I crossed paths with pizzaiola before?

Right away, it's important to note that, as Michele Scicolone explains in her book 1,000 Italian Recipes (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004), the sauce can't actually be used on pizza, because the extreme heat of wood-fired Neapolitan pizza ovens would overcook an already cooked sauce. Instead, it's just supposed to be reminiscent of the sauce you put on pizza.

Which leads to another important question: How does pizzaiola differ from any other traditional tomato sauce, like marinara? In the strictest definition, marinara is tomato sauce flavored with garlic and basil. Pizzaiola, on the other hand, gets garlic and dried oregano. Sounds slight, and, well, it is.

Pizzaiola's distinguishing feature is that it's usually used as a sauce for meat. According to Anna Del Conte's Gastronomy of Italy, (Pavilion 2013), pizzaiola is a specialty of Naples, but is common everywhere. Expecting to find a trove of recipe options, I flipped through 100 or so Italian cookbooks, setting aside any that mentioned the term. In the end, my haul came to a paltry three books. Not exactly what I'd hoped for.

I think this has to do with the straightforward and humble nature of pizzaiola. It's one of those dishes that's so basic it feels unnecessary to write a recipe for it. But it's a shame more people don't know about pizzaiola, because it has the ability to transform almost any cut of meat.

Here's a basic blueprint: Pick up some thick-cut pork chops. Sauté them in olive oil in a heavy skillet over high heat until browned but still pink inside. Remove and set aside while you prepare the sauce. Saute some garlic, and then add tomatoes, salt, and oregano, and simmer until the sauce reduces to a thick, spoonable consistency. Add the chops back in to finish the cooking. Serve the chops with the sauce spooned on top.

The sauce has a vibrancy from the tomatoes, which plays nicely off the pork. But it also picks up the juices from the pork, adding a savory depth to each bite. Serve this with pasta, with more of the sauce drizzled on top of the noodles, and you have a filling weeknight dinner.

Of course, as with all incredibly simple recipes, quality is key. Pizzaiola is only as good as the tomatoes used. During the summer, this is slightly easier, but if it's cooler, you'll need to track down some top-quality canned tomatoes, preferably San Marzano from Italy.

Besides pork, beef and veal are the most popular meats served with the sauce. If you're willing to cast any worries of authenticity aside, you can repeat this process with almost any type of protein. Chicken is an obvious choice, and I also saw one recipe for swordfish. Hoping to push the boundaries of the dish, I tried the sauce with squid. With the addition of a sprinkle of crushed red pepper, the sauce makes a lively and satisfying companion. And if you make sure to cook the cephalopod only until just done, usually about two minutes, you'll be rewarded with exceptionally tender squid. Once again, adding pasta turns this into a full meal, though polenta or potatoes work, too.

Though quick-cooking meats work with the sauce, I believe it works best when it's paired with an equally humble cut of meat that needs time to cook. In Lidia's Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine, (Knopf, 2015), Lidia Bastianich offers a recipe for short ribs pizzaiola that requires more than two hours to slowly simmer. Instead of fresh and vibrant, the sauce reduces to a robust and richly hearty base, with a luscious body from the fatty beef. This is the kind of stew that everyone, from a picky child to a confident cook, will melt for. It's equivalent to a hug from your grandmother.

Call pizzaiola humble or unduly spartan, but when done right, the result can be refreshingly uncomplicated and soul-satisfying.

See recipes linked below.