(Makeup) ffwD: beef chuck daube with carrots & macaroni

So here’s my actual “makeup” French Fridays with Dorie post: beef chuck daube with carrots & macaroni that was assigned back on November 30, 2012. (I’m guessing I skipped it before because I was still on a Thanksgiving food hangover.)

Dorie’s original recipe calls for beef cheeks, but I couldn’t find those and used the suggested beef chuck alternative instead. However, thinking this dish would be similar to Dorie’s “my go-to beef daube” from December 2010, I had the butcher cut up my beef chuck into one-inch pieces. Wrong move. This daube calls for larger cuts equaling half a pound each, four pieces total. Oh, well.

I didn’t have a bottle of Syrah on hand, but I found a bottle of BBQ red wine, whatever that means, to use for the braising. The daube turned out rather tasty but smelled amazing after I added the bittersweet chocolate. The melted chocolate gave the beef’s sauce a nice richness which paired well with the hearty macaroni, but I’d probably serve this over rice in the future.

This beef chuck daube with carrots & macaroni was made as a part of French Fridays with Dorie, a group of bloggers who are cooking their way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours.