Jeff's Roast Beef Birthday Dinner

With this dish, you need a bold red like a cabernet sauvignon. We opened a bottle of wine we brought back with us from Australia. The wine is a 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot-Cabernet Franc blend from the Coonawarra region (known for its Cabernets) made by Highbank. It was a perfect compliment of tangy berry and cedar flavors and had a wonderful fine-grained and velvety finish.

This recipe is from one of Jamie Oliver's shows on the FoodNetwork, the Naked Chef. This dish will easily feed 6 people, so cut the recipe in half if you plan to serve it for only two people and have some leftovers.

For the Beef:

1 (5 1/2 pound) rib roast
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
3 red onions, halved
2 bulbs garlic, plus 4 cloves garlic, peeled
7 pounds (3 kilograms) roasting potatoes, peeled
3 rosemary sprigs
2 thumb sized pieces ginger, peeled and diced
1/2 bottle robust red wine

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F and heat a large thick bottomed roasting tray on the stovetop.

Rub the beef generously with salt, then add a little olive oil to the tray and lightly color the meat for a couple of minutes on all sides. Lay the onions and bulbs of garlic in the tray with the beef on top of them, then cook in the pre heated oven for a total of 1 1/2 hours.

While the beef is roasting, parboil the potatoes in salted boiling water for about 10 minutes and drain in a colander. Toss them around in the colander to chaff the outside of the potatoes - this will make them really crispy.

After 30 minutes, take the beef out of the oven and place the potatoes and rosemary in the pan. With a garlic press or grater, squeeze or grate the cloves of garlic and ginger over everything in the tray. Put the tray back in the oven for the final hour. When the beef is done (you can use a meat thermometer to achieve the desired temperature), put the potatoes in a dish to keep warm, and place the beef on a plate, covered with foil, to rest, and start the Yorkshire puddings.

Remove most of the fat from the roasting tray and leave the caramelized onions and the leftover beef broth, garlic and ginger in the tray. Add 1 teaspoon of flour to the tray and mash everything together with a potato masher. Heat the tray on the stovetop and when hot, add the red wine. Cook over medium heat for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes, until the gravy is coats the back of a spoon. Add any juice from the beef and add some beef stock to thin the gravy necessary. Pour the gravy through a sieve and push it through with a spoon, and serve in a warmed gravy jug. Serve with Yorkshire puddings.

Huge Yorkshire Puddings (or Popovers):

2 pints milk
4 ounces all purpose flour
Pinch salt
3 eggs
Vegetable oil (it is important to use an oil like sesame or peanut oil because it does not burn in the oven like an olive oil will at hot temperatures)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Mix the batter ingredients together and let rest for 10 minutes.

Put 2 inches of oil in each section of a muffin tray and heat in the oven for about 10 minutes. Remove the tray and divide the batter into each of the muffin areas in the tray. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes until the puddings are crisp and puffy, but don't open the oven door before then or they won't rise.