(upbeat music) - On a weeknight, when I don't have a lot of time, I love making a simple skirt steak.

Today we're making it with a crunchy olive tapenade and it really only takes a few ingredients.

So let's get started.

First we'll begin by seasoning the skirt steak.

We'll just use a little bit of salt and pepper.

Skirt steak is a pretty thin cut of meat so it doesn't need a lot of time for the seasoning to really start to sink in.

Just be very generous with your salt.

It may seem like a lot.

This is kosher salt so it's not as salty as table salt.

And then we will hit it with a little bit of pepper.

(upbeat music) We will give us about 15 minutes while we make our olive tapenade.

I'll wash my hands and be right back.

Now let's get started on that tapenade.

For this, we will actually begin by dicing our shallots.

We'll do a few horizontal slices through very much like slicing an onion.

We get these beautiful little teeny tiny, diced pieces of shallot.

Before we juice this lemon, I want to make the most of it.

So I'm actually going to zest it.

Remember, you only want the very outer part of the lemon skin.

Then we will take our lemon.

I like squeezing it over a little strainer like this to catch all of the seeds.

I have two types of olives today I have Kalamata olives.

These are the briniest and saltiest of the olives.

And then I have Castelvetrano olives, arguably some of the best olives on earth, buttery, a little bit briny, and we're just going to roughly chop them.

This does not have to be perfect.

What you want to look out for for this dish in particular is that they are packed in brine rather than olive oil.

Get it in the bowl.

Now let's add our parsley.

You always want to make sure that when you're making a sauce to go with any meat, that you have a nice fresh herb.

(knife cutting) Perfect, that was half a bunch of parsley going in.

Now I said this was a crunchy tapenade.

And that crunch is going to come from hazelnuts.

Rough chop here.

These are already roasted, which just gives you even more depth of flavor.

Our hazelnuts are ready to join the party.

Last ingredient and don't freak out, but we're putting anchovies in here.

Anchovies add an umami flavor to dishes.

I promise this will not taste fishy at all.

So two filets packed in oil.

Give it a nice small, small, small, small chop.

We basically have a rough paste that goes in.

The olives and the anchovies are salty so you don't need to add a lot more salt.

But about half a teaspoon is going to bring it all to life.

And then a few turns of black pepper.

And finally, this is a sauce after all, so the olive oil, let's mix it up and see how it turned out.

We'll let this sit and have all the flavors hang out together while we finish up our skirt steak.

The key to a delicious skirt steak is for it to have a nice crust on the outside, dark brown and pink in the middle, I'm going to dab these steaks.

Before they go inside, we have to add oil, brush the outside with oil before it hits the pan.

I have this pan on high heat and now it's time to add the steaks.

(steak sizzling) And after each side has had about three to four minutes to cook, I'll check to see if they're ready.

(steaks sizzling) These look perfect.

We achieved exactly what we wanted, so we'll transfer them to this plate to rest for about 10 minutes before we serve our dish.

We got such a beautiful exterior on these skirt steaks.

I'm going into the steak this way and as we start to slice in, you can see we got a beautiful, medium, medium rare finish.

Now let's serve this dish.

I will transfer our steak over to this plate.

We'll get our crunchy olive tapenade right on top.

(upbeat music) Who said you can't have a fancy meal on a weeknight?

This is our seared skirt steak with a crunchy olive tapenade.

And now all that's left to do is eat.

(upbeat music)