Editor's note: Today, we introduce "Sunday Best," a new food feature for the Living section. This biweekly column will highlight the best — or favorite — recipes of Sunday News staff members. Investigative reporter Chip Smedley gets us started.

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time with an aunt and uncle. My uncle did all of the cooking (and gave me my first cooking lessons — it's long been a tradition in our family that the men cook).

After I turned 10 or thereabouts, he introduced another tradition: On my birthday, I could choose whatever "special meal" I wanted him to make. For many years, that meal consisted of steamed clams and Swiss steak. Who knows?!

My uncle eventually taught me how to make his version of Swiss steak and, to this day, it remains one of my most cherished "comfort foods."

It's like going home.

UNCLE HOBART'S SWISS STEAK
3 pounds beef (bottom- or top-round steak, or chuck steak)*

½ cup flour with 1 teaspoon each of pepper and salt mixed in

3 tablespoons canola oil

1 large onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 green pepper, sliced

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 teaspoon thyme

1 teaspoon marjoram

1 (14½-ounce) can diced tomatoes

1 cup red wine

1 cup beef broth

1 bay leaf

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Dredge the meat in the flour/salt/pepper mixture.

Heat a wide, deep pan or Dutch oven at medium high; add 2 tablespoons canola oil.

Place steak in pan and cook until browned (about 10 minutes per side).

Remove beef and set aside.

Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the pan.

Sauté onion, garlic and green pepper, but hold about two slices of both the onion and green pepper for later use (scrape up the tasty little browned bits in the pan while sautéing). Season with salt, pepper and half the herbs (no bay leaf yet).

Add tomatoes, wine and beef broth; heat. Now add the bay leaf.

Place beef into mixture, sprinkle top with remaining herbs.

Cover the pan and place in middle rack of oven, cook for 2 hours.

Uncover pan, turn beef over and cook for another half-hour. Beef should be tender enough to be cut with a fork when done.

For an additional flair, prior to that last step, my uncle would slice a tomato and spread those slices, along with the two or three pepper and onion slices he kept aside, over the beef for the final half-hour.

Serve with rice.

*Note: You can use either round steak or chuck steak, but remember that the chuck contains a little more connective tissue and should, therefore, be cooked a bit longer. If you get the bottom- or top-round, cut it into steaks that are about 1½- to 2-inches thick. The idea is to make sure the entire cut sits in — but is not submerged under — the liquid.

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Chip Smedley is a staff writer for the Sunday News. E-mail him at csmedley@lnpnews.com.