20 garlic cloves and 5 ingredients yields 1 slow cooker supper

 

The recipe suggests Italian bread to sop up the sauce; we opted for rice since we had it on hand.

Sometimes I forget how wonderful it is at the end of a weekend to have supper already simmering away and ready by Sunday evening. But then I remember my crock pot again.

Beef shanks with red wine and tomatoes

From "The Italian Slow Cooker," by Michele Scicolone. I've dipped into her French slow cooker book for years, but just ran across the Italian version. Same premise, that slowly simmered classics are well suited for taking advantage of what crock pots are truly good for.

Ingredients

20 garlic cloves, peeled
2 cups dry red wine
1 14-ounce can Italian tomatoes
1 4-inch rosemary sprig
3 pounds bone-in beef shanks

Method

Put garlic cloves in the bottom of a slow cooker. Add wine, tomatoes and rosemary. Salt and pepper the beef shanks and add to pot. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours until the meat is falling off the bones tender. 

Rating: A fuss-free way to get a hearty Sunday supper ready. The garlic is beyond spreadable at the point the meat is done, so you get a very nice sauce, and strangely not one that's overwhelmingly garlic flavored. It's not like roasted garlic, which is kind of sticky pasty, but instead almost silky. I don't know that I would call it company food, and I wouldn't call it cheap, since even shanks aren't free, but we ate it happily.