Each May, I spend a weekend with friends at the South Cliff Inn bed-and-breakfast in St. Joseph, Mich.
It’s our home base for an annual jazz concert called Smooth Jazz at Sunset at nearby Silver Beach, a whole lot of wine drinking and a whole lot of Scrabble.
Bill Swisher is the proprietor of the South Cliff Inn, and prepares a sumptuous breakfast for guests each morning. He has even found a way to make glutton-free dishes taste good.
Swisher is an accomplished chef, and several years ago published a cookbook—because so many guests had been asking him to do so. The recipe that follows is from that cookbook (now, sadly, out of print), and makes 3-5 servings, depending on how you cut the chuck roast.
Serve it with the same wine you use in preparing the dish, and enjoy it on a cool autumn evening.
LE WINE BEOUF
Ingredients
- 3½ lbs. chuck roast, cut into thick, serving-size chunks
- 1 lb. thick-sliced bacon
- 2 tablespoons margarine or butter
- 1 large bay leaf
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- Salt, to taste
- 7 cups dry red wine
- ¾ cup flour
- 1 lb. whole mushrooms
- 9 medium onions, peeled
Preparation
- Marinate the meat in 6 cups of the wine overnight.
- Cook half of the bacon in a heavy Dutch oven until almost done, then remove the meat.
- Add the beef and brown on all sides. Add bay leaf, garlic and salt.
- Heat the marinade just to boiling, and add more wine if necessary. Pour over the meat.
- Add flour and stir.
- Bake at 350 degrees in covered Dutch oven for 1 hour.
- While beef is cooking, cook the rest of the bacon, then add whole onions and brown. Remove from the heat, and add mushrooms.
- After the beef has cooked for 1 hour, add the remainder of the ingredients and continue cooking, covered, for 90 minutes more.
