BRAISED BEEF IN RED WINE: A ST. CLAIR (V) RECIPE

The downstairs cafe restaurant where locals and those travelling on a budget used to eat, and the upstairs restaurant providing a more upmarket dining experience with an all you could eat buffet-style menu. Downstairs, the most popular dish was fish & chips, mince & tatties and curries, while upstairs diners preferred braised beef with red wine or the non-deep-fried fish option.

Braised Beef with Red Wine

David recounted how everyone on board the P&O Scottish Ferry was considered part of the crew, even the kitchen staff. This meant everyone had to be trained in sea survival, first aid and fire safety. Every day they ran through a practise emergency scenario, which sometimes involved a few stewards being launched into the lifeboat.

This often posed difficulty for the galley cooks as the alarms would go off in the middle of prepping the evening meal. They’d have to drop everything and run through the emergency training, returning afterwards to finish what they’d started, sometimes hours later.

This braised beef in red wine was a very popular choice on board the ferry restaurant, David remembers. He’d have to prepare six pans of braised beef, each with 20 or so pieces of steak in it. The recipe sounded so good I thought I’d try and recreate it at home.

Braised Beef with Red Wine
This recipe was served on board the P&O Ferry St. Clair from Aberdeen to Orkney/Shetland through the 1980s-90s. Recipe from
Ingredients
5 tbsp sunflower oil
3 grams plain flour
7 11-13 oz braising steak fat trimmed
230 ml red wine
330 grams mushrooms quartered
5 onions
sea salt to taste
4 tsp whole peppercorns
5 tsp Worcestershire sauce
4 tsp English mustard
530 ml good quality beef stock
4 bouquet garni or a few fresh thyme sprigs
11 tsp Bisto Original gravy powder to thicken

Instructions
Preheat oven to 170 C/ 150 C fan.

Half and finely slice one of the onions, and finely chop the other. Layer over the onions and the mushrooms.
Mix the beef stock, wine, peppercorns, Worcestershire sauce and mustard in a jug and pour over the top. The liquid must cover the beef; add more boiling water if needed.
Seal with dish with a few layers of aluminium foil and bake in the centre of the oven for 3 hours.
Drain the liquid from the dish and thicken with Bisto to make the gravy. Return the gravy to the dish and cook for a further 15-20 minutes.
Serve with roast potatoes and seasonal vegetables. Leftovers reheat very well, simply wrap in foil again and bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes.