This beef stew is a typical rustic Greek style dish that I have based on a recipe on Katerina’s Healthy Greek Recipes website at http://www.squidoo.com/greekcuisine

It makes an ideal food pairing for a South Australian Grenache red wine.

Ingredients for 8 servings

2 kg of beef - rump, round, or other stewing cut, cut in 5cm chunks
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup of olive oil
2/3 cup of red wine
1 1/2 cups of water
3 ripe tomatoes, chopped in blender
250ml ounces of tomato passata
1 tablespoons of sea salt
pepper
large pinch of cinnamon
1 teaspoon oregano or dry thyme

Method

Sprinkle the meat with 1 tablespoon of salt, pepper cinnamon and oregano. Sauté the onion in the oil over medium heat for a couple of minutes then add the beef and cook for another 8 minutes, turning often.

Stir in the wine, cover loosely, and cook for another 10 minutes.

Add tomatoes and tomato sauce and cook until it boils. Add water as needed, reduce heat to low and cook gently for an hour and a half (the longer the better).

Remove from heat and let sit for 10-15 minutes covered before serving. Serve with spaghetti, oven baked potatoes or mashed potatoes, and perhaps a country style greek salad.

If you don’t have a Greek red wine to drink with this dish a rustic red wine would go very well. My suggestion is for a Grenache.

This is a splendid feast for a dozen or so people. It needs a courtyard and a long sunny afternoon with plenty of good friends. If you serve it in winter, don’t worry, the earthy flavours will enable you and your guests to dream of a sunny courtyard.

A note on the ingredients - you can scale the quantities up and down and substitute for out of season vegetables.

Seafood ingredients (about 200g per person more you use shellfish):
Salt cod, firm fleshed fish fillets, scallops, prawns, oysters, mussels, crabs, baby octopus or even lobster

Vegetables: any or all of the following
New potatoes steamed
Fresh beetroot, wrap in foil, bake in moderate oven for 1 hour, then rub off skin
Baby carrots, blanched
Small green beans, blanched
Fresh artichokes trimmed and boiled for 20 minutes
Asparagus, steamed
Cauliflower broken into florets and steamed

12 eggs, hardboiled shelled and halved
About 2 cups of aioli see recipe
Parsley or fresh herbs to garnish.
Some crusty French bread sticks.

This whole thing is a bit of a logistical nightmare, so aim to have the vegetables prepared early and kept warm rather than hot. As each is ready place it onto warm serving platter or too, gradually assembling the feast. A slotted spoon is very handy for all of this.

The seafood ingredients should be poached in water or you could use stock. Cook the salt cod separately. I retain the cooking liquor from the other seafoods to make a soup later.

When the seafood is ready arrange it on your platter(s) with the vegetables and top with the boiled eggs. Scatter over some parsley.

Serve with breadsticks and bowls of aioli so that guests can help themselves.

You need plenty of cold white wine with this dish. I would recommend a Marsanne or perhaps a Viognier. Another choice would be a Provencal style rose, perhaps made from Grenache or perhaps Mourvedre.

Garlic Showing the Purple… Buy From Art.com

Aioli is a wonderful, versatile garlic mayonnaise. It is especially suitable with poached or steamed seafoods and seems to have a natural affinity with steamed potatoes. In fact you can use it anywhere you use normal mayonnaise.

You really should try that wonderful Provencal seafood dish Le Grand Aioli.

Ingredients:

• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled
• half teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• Approximately 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
• Lemon juice, to taste
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

• Crush the garlic with the salt in a mortar and pestle, or crush it well under the side of a kitchen knife
• Place the egg yolk and mustard into the bowl and whisk well with wire whisk
• Then slowly add the olive oil little by little whisking all the while
• You can do this in a food processor or blender
• You should get a nice mayonnaise consistency
• Store in the fridge

For more garlic recipes just type ‘garlic’ into the search box.

Garlic lovers may be interested in the following books:

Food pairing with aioli

Aioli and other garlic-rich sauces require some thought when choosing an appropriate wine. You need to have sharpish wines when a dish has a dominant garlic flavour. Delicate wines can be overpowered. Vermentino or Viognier can be good choices for white, a rose made from Grenache might also suit. A rustic Italian red wine or perhaps a South Australian GSM is another option you might consider.