Stewin...

in general, I love to stew things for hours...I feel like there has to be something good that comes out of long hours put into cooking, and the easiest thing to do is to just stew it.  

Maybe because of that, or just cus its easy and healthy I make tomato based stew-items pretty often.  

First off, the veggie stew...now look me in the eye and tell me this bright red isnt gorgeous!  

its just a big pot of crushed tomatos, lots of celery, cabbage, carrots, onions with a garlic and olive oil and salt.  Oh, and white wine.  So much juice comes out of the veggies that I dont even add any water!  

Next, next to that pot, I made pasta sauce, which I think can be called bolognese or ragu..

what I did is pretty similar to the veggie stew, but this one is completely different in the sense that it has shredded beef, making it much more oilier.  All the veggies are chopped much finer, and instead of cabbages I added dried shiitake.  The tomato is pureed instead of chopped, and the wine used is red opposed to white.  This, I like to go all out and flavor flavor flavor, so I added a small amount of anchovy sauce, bay leaf, and secret ingredients (which again are only called so just cus i never know till the last minute what Id like to put in, its basically a secret to myself more than to anyone...) soy sauce, mirin, worchester sauce(always thought this was called wooster sauce but if wikipedia says so, i shall follow suit...).  Oh, yes of course, LOTS of red wine....wont work without it.  The result of three hours of stirring and stewing is this beautiful brown sauce which almost tastes like demi-glace sauce.  A very rich, bold heavy flavor, probably cus of the red wine i used...

I usually drink the wine I use for cooking so by the end of the three or four hour cooking session, a lot of wine is consumed by me and the stews...it only tastes better that way :)