Beef with zing...

On Sunday night, I decided to make beef stew. I googled recipes and watched several videos, mostly various versions of beef bourgignon. I figured I would start it late so that it could cook on low in the crockpot overnight. I already had onion and carrots chopped up, so it should have been fine. Well.... I found myself browning beef in batches at 1am. I also found that the red wine that I chose, although having been perched at an angle for many years, had a dead, dry cork, which broke apart when I was opening the bottle. Glad that there was a big enough chunk of cork left in so that I could have another go at it, and that it came out fairly clean. I poured a bit into a small wine glass to have a boo, and it was a beautiful deep garnet red. I did not particularly care for the taste, but then, I'm not much of a wine drinker, unless it is on the sweeter side. I ended up not following any recipe in particular, so I had no idea how this would turn out. When I was done, and after cleaning up most of the aftermath, I showered and went to bed, but found that I couldn't sleep. The last time I looked at the clock was 4:33. Crazy.

When I did a taste test Monday morning, it was ... not bad... There was a very unique flavour to it however, that I couldn't place. I hadn't used much salt, had only put in a touch of sage, a little more pepper, but mostly thyme. Today when I heated some up to have with mashed potatoes, the flavour burst out with a zesty zing of some sort. It may well be the best beef stew I've had. I'm guessing the wine had a little something to do with it.