I continued my four-day stew today. I separated the meat from the vegetable marinade and dried it on paper towels. I cooked the vegetables and liquid until they were soft, removed them from the pan, and browned the beef in batches. The beef creates a really nice fond on the pan, so when it’s done I deglazed the pan with a bit of water. I added the scraped up brown bits to the beef back in my soup pot, then covered it with the cooked vegetables, diced roma tomatoes and bay leaves. I added red Zinfandel wine (1999 David Bruce Paso Robles – something good but not expensive) and about a cup of beef stock. I used a bottle of wine that was already open, so I added the contents of the bottle plus more beef stock to cover the beef mixture.
This will sit all night in the refrigerator. Tomorrow is the most labor intensive day. If we wanted, we could have the stew tomorrow – I would just need to cook it until the beef is fork-tender. But I think we’ll have it Sunday.