I don't know if this would help, but we discussed a similar dilemma with our electrician, and he suggested running the wires along the top of the beam, so hidden from view, and simply drilling down through the beam for the mounting bracket, which would simply be screwed on to the exposed underside of the beam.

Love the thought but my beam is structural and our engineer and architect both said no drilling through.

Hm. In that case, could your carpenter make a dummy face for the wire from some matching lumber, so it'll just look like a plank, but s/he could router out a groove for the wire?

nhbakker, we did drill through the beam, ran romex through into a pancake electrical box where we mounted the fan. The beam was 7 1/2" wide

would love to know what type of recessed lighting was used here and size please.