Slow cooked beef in red wine with mash potatoes and yorkshire pudding

This recipe is just for the slow cooked beef. The recipe for yorkshire pudding is labelled under "cakes and pastries".

This is not hard to make, the prep work is just a bit time consuming. Best cooked over 2 days, to allow the beef to marinate overnight in red wine. I have divided up the recipe into 2 parts, i.e for day 1 and for day 2.

Day 1 - 1/2 hour prepping and marinating beef .
Day 2 - 40 minutes prepping, 3 hours for slow cooking beef.
I took about 6 hours altogether for Day 2, to make a whole meal of :-
- red wine beef stew,
- yorkshire pudding,
- mashed potatoes,
- 2 types of sousvide greens :-)
(1. fennel with crushed toasted mustard seed, olive oil, orange juice, zest of 1 orange and zest of 1/2 a lemon), 1 tsp of honey, salt and pepper.
2. green bak choy with slightly burnt garlic, olive oil, Braggs soy sauce, 1/4 tsp of sugar), and
- a dessert (puff pastry tart of lemon curd and melted buffalo mozarella, with toasted sesame seeds)

For 5p

DAY 1
1.2 kg of gravy beef or chuck steak or wagyu beef cheeks
Beef Marinade
1/2 bottle of red wine (500ml)
A handful of herbs (e.g 1 sprig of rosemary OR bunch of thyme, AND 3 bay leaves)
Pinch of salt (1/2 tsp)
Pinch of cracked pepper (1/2 tsp)
Swirl of olive oil (1 tbsp)

Remove any "fat" or "membrane" from the beef.
Cut the beef to slightly larger than 2 x 1 inch. It will melt and reduce in size when cooking.
Put beef into a large mixing bowl.
Add all the beef marinade ingredients except the red wine, and gently massage it into the beef.
Pour marinated beef into a 1 gallon ziplock bag.
Pour red wine into the ziplock bag.
Try and press out all the air before zipping the bag.
Leave in fridge to marinate overnight.

DAY 2 - steps written in order of prep and cooking
Preheat oven to 150 deg (fan force)

Remove marinated beef from fridge.
Use thongs to pick up the pieces of beef and place on a strainer, sitting on top of a plate. This is to "dry" the beef so that it will brown and crisp up with flour when searing.
Pour marinate juice from the ziplock bag and those collected at the bottom of the plate, into a pot and boil to burn off the alcohol. Skim and throw away the layer of "foam" that bubbles up. Set aside the red wine.
You can pat dry with paper towel but will waste all the marinate juice.

While beef is dripping dry, prep the rest below.

Other ingredients
1 1/2 large pieces of bacon (or speck) - about 200g
3 spanish onion or 6 shallots - peeled and finely diced
3 cloves of garlic - peeled, crushed and chopped
1 stalk of celery - finely diced
3 carrots - peeled and finely diced.
Herb and Spice Bouquet garni (1 small sprig of rosemary, 6 bay leaves, 1/2 stick cinnamon, 1 star anise)
A bunch of parsley, chopped.
2 tbsp of flour - spread over a large plate - for coating beef before searing.
Olive oil - 1 tbsp.
1 tsp salt
1 cup of beef stock.
1 cup of red wine.
About 20 button mushroom - cleaned, left whole.
About 25g of butter (the French would put 50g if not more!)
About 15g of chopped dark chocolate

Chop up bacon.
Fry the bacon in medium heat in a good cast iron stew pot e.g. Le Creuset/Chasseur etc, till golden brown/most fat rendered. Everything else after this step will be cooked in the same pot - more layering of flavours, less washing up !
Remove fried bacon - set aside.
Keep heat on. Add olive oil.

Prepare for searing beef.
By now, the beef should be pretty drip dried. Divide for searing in 2 batches. Do not pile up all the beef on top of each other in one big batch or it would end up braising in its own juice instead of browning.
One by one lightly powder the pieces of beef with flour, and sear evenly on both sides till golden brown, sprinkling a pinch of salt all over the beef for seasoning in the process.
When beef are seared, remove beef onto a bowl/plate and set aside. Keep heat on the pot.
Into the pot, add  the garlic and onions, sautee/sweat, then add carrots and celery, saute/sweat (about 1 or 2 minutes).
Add the bouquet garni and half the parsley. Pour in red wine and deglaze pot/burnt alcohol off.
Return the seared beef and juices that oozed out back into the pot.
Make sure there are enough liquids to just cover the beef, if not add a little beef stock.
Cut aluminium foil into round shape - slightly bigger than the circumference of the pot by about 1 cm.
Gently depressed foil to sit just on top of the ingredients and cover it, there will be a bit extra sticking up the sides of the inside of the pot - covering with the foil helps to prevent burning while slow cooking in the oven.
Cook in preheated oven for 2 hours.
After 2 hours, remove pot from oven. Set aside foil. Give it a gentle stir to prevent/remove sticking ingredients.
Add the mushrooms and remaining stock, making sure meat just covered by liquid.
Cover with foil again.
Return to oven, cook for 1 more hour.
Remove from oven and heat.
Let it rest and cool for about 1 hour - to allow excess oil to separate for easy removal.
Remove foil.
Slowly remove excess oil from the pot using a spoon. (I removed almost 1 cup of oil). Put oil and keep in fridge for use another day - this beef "dripping" is great to simply stir through noodles/pasta for a easy lunch! I used some to make the yorkshire pudding as well)
Reheat pot on low heat, add butter and dark chocolate, and stir through to melt and combine.
Just before serving, sprinkle the remaining parsley onto beef.
Serve on top of mash potatoes.

Bon Appetite!