healthy red wine garlic pot roast

I'm sure that all winelovers read with great interest yesterday, the article about red wine being healthy. Red wine has long been given the vote of approval by many doctors and dieticians as the alcohol of choice, not only being less in alcoholic value than many cocktails and spirits, but also because it contains less calories, and some believe it can be helpful in lowering high cholesterol. The BBC report yesterday was headed "wine allows guilt-free gluttony" and went on to explain that a chemical found in red wine, when given to mice, countered some effects of a high-calorie diet, improving the health of the mice, and increasing their life-span. It also said that the chemical could not reverse the consequences of over-eating and did not make you lose weight. Therefore, I am not ready to go all out for guilt-free gluttony just yet.

We have always drunk wine at home with a meal and if friends visit would not hesitate to offer them a glass of wine. In England I would buy wines from France, Italy and Germany, but since living in California I now include many Californian wines as well. The odd thing is that many of the European wines I bought in England are available here, and at a much cheaper price, so they are definitely still worth buying. Wine has become more and more popular in America over the years and much of the snobbery and silliness attached to drinking wine has, thank goodness, disappeared. A new approach in marketing wine is discussed in the fascinating book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More where the author describes how the Australian wine company, Yellow Tail, have gone out of their way to simplify the choices in wine to one or two reds and one or two whites, and kept the price at a very reasonable level. They have also made the labels modern to appeal to a wider audience, including younger people who often used to think of wine as "an older person's drink". I love trying different wines, red, white and rose and use them extensively in cooking.

If you do not generally drink wine but would like to start, choosing something to begin with doesn't need to be a daunting task. There are a whole range of prices and tastes from sweet to dry, and most of the labels on the back of the bottle give a description of the flavor of the wine and suggest meals or snacks that would accompany the wine the best. Decide how much you would like to pay and start there. Paying a lot for a bottle of wine does not necessarily mean you will like it. Many of the wines I love are in the $8-$15 range, and when you think that you can pay anything from $3 to $300 for wines freely stocked in most supermarkets, then that's not really a lot. Many wine stores also have staff who can advise about the flavors of the wine and also any deals. For example, the chain store Beverages & More often has a 5 cent week. This means that if you become a member (free at the checkout) you can purchase selected bottles of wine for 5 cents. Not a bad deal!

One of my favorite wines is Ecco Domani chianti. We drank chianti, the popular Italian wine, when we lived in England and I first tried the Ecco Domani wine a few years ago. It costs between $8 and 12 a bottle depending on where you buy it, and is a fruity red wine which does not have the full body of many of the cabernets and merlots. It goes well with pasta dishes and cheese. It was also featured once on an episode of Bravo TV's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in one of their suggested meals, so what could be a better recommendation than that?

So continuing with the healthy red wine thought, I pulled out one of my favorite winter recipes for Garlic-Wine Pot Roast from the New Dieter's Cookbook: Eat Well, Feel Great, Lose Weight (Better Homes & Gardens). This recipe is great because it is super-easy, low in calories, tastes great on a cold, winter's day and also contains that magic ingredient, red wine.

Garlic-Wine Pot Roast
Preparation time 12 mins; cooking time 2 hours; low cholesterol; low sodium; 290 calories per person

Ingredients
Non-stick spray coating
1 3-pound boneless beef round rump roast, trimmed of separable fat
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup dry wine (cabernet, chianti, bordeaux)
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons instant beef bouillon granules
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 pound carrots, cut into 2-inch long pieces
1 pound cut green beans or 1 16-ounce package frozen cut green beans
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons water

1. Spray a cold Dutch oven with nonstick spray coating, then preheat over medium heat. Brown roast on both sides in the Dutch oven. Drain any fat. Add the 3/4 cup water, wine, onion, garlic, bouillon granules, thyme, and pepper. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

2. Add carrots to the Dutch oven and simmer for 40 minutes. Then, add beans and simmer for ten minutes or until beans and meat are tender. Transfer warm vegetables to a serving platter. Keep warm while making gravy.

3. For gravy, skim fat from pan juices. Stir together cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water. Stir mixture into pan juices. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Then, cook and stir for 2 minutes more. To serve, spoon gravy over meat and vegetables. Makes 10 servings.

Nutrition information per serving
290 calories, 34 g protein, 12 g carbohydrate, 11 g fat, 98 mg cholesterol, 138 mg sodium, 590 mg potassium.