Don't Sweat the Aubergine

You’ll find that each batch browns more rapidly than the previous one. 2
    Warm about 2 tbsp more oil in a heavy casserole, and add the onions, celery and garlic, stirring them over a medium to low heat until they soften and take on some colour; it may take 20 to 30 minutes. 3
    Pour in the wine, and allow it to simmer for a couple of minutes. 4 Tip in the browned meat, with any juices the pieces have disgorged, and pour in cold stock barely to cover the contents of the casserole, 5 along with herbs and a little salt. Put the lid on.
    Put the stew into the centre of a gas mark 1/140°C oven. After an hour, check it; if nothing is happening, leave it, but check it again every half an hour. You want the gentlest possible simmer. 6 If the liquid is bubbling too fast, lower the heat and/or put the casserole in a lower part of the oven. Don’t cook the stew beyond the point at which the meat feels tender when you prod it with a knife or fork. After the pot has come to a simmer, that point may arrive in an hour (lamb) or hour and a half (beef). If you have time, leave the stew to rest for half an hour after taking it out of the oven. 7
    Strain the sauce through a sieve into a saucepan. Separate the meat from the vegetables and herbs, return it to the casserole, and put the lid back on; push down gently on the vegetables and herbs to expel the juice into the saucepan, and then discard them. 8 Spoon off the fat that rises to the surface of the sauce, or dab it off with paper towels.
    The sauce will probably be more plentiful, and thinner, than you want. Turn on the heat under the saucepan, bring the sauce to a boil, and simmer it vigorously to reduce it. As it reduces, it will become slightly viscous, owing to the starch that the vegetables have imparted. You may need to start stirring it, so that it doesn’t stick, and to turn down the heat, so that the sides of the pan do not burn; you also need to taste it, to ensure that the flavour does not become too concentrated. In particular, you have to watch out for saltiness. It’s best to salt the stew very moderately at first, adding more salt later if you need it.
    Meanwhile, sauté the mushrooms in some butter ( see here ).
    Once the sauce has arrived at a volume and consistency that please you, return it, with the mushrooms, to the casserole, and reheat, covered, very gently. When it is thoroughly warmed through, serve.
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VARIATIONS
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    All that effort just to make a stew? As I said in the Introduction ( see here onwards), there are plenty of more abbreviated stew recipes, and they’ll turn out fine. But cookery books, which are only too happy to give you complicated sets of instructions for fancy dishes, rarely pay the same attention to detail when it comes to guidance on simple ones. You can follow a recipe to the letter, and find that you’ve got too much sauce, or too little; that the contents of your casserole take the best part of an hour to reach simmering point in the oven, throwing out the timings; that the stew either bubbles too furiously, or not at all; that the meat has not tenderized, or has become overcooked. It’s not your fault. Ingredients, utensils and cookers behave differently. Cooking involves improvising to cope with such contingencies.
    I apologize for the vagueness of my advice on sauce reduction. But I have to leave this process to your judgement. If I’m serving a stew with rice, or boiled potatoes, I might reduce the sauce for only a short time, and dish out the meal in bowls. Sometimes, I prefer a richer stew, with meat in a coating and small puddle of concentrated sauce.
    I have come to prefer to leave out flour from stews. It thickens the sauce at the expense of flavour, and can produce an unattractive congealing effect on the plate. (I rarely make gravy – see here , above – with flour either.) If you’d like to include it, you can choose from two methods. First, after you’ve tossed the meat with oil, toss it with as much flour as will give it a fine coating. Browning it with the meat adds flavour, though at the expense of some of its thickening qualities. Or, second, you could stir the flour into the softened vegetables before adding the wine and then the stock, stirring as you go as you would when making a béchamel. Remember, a tbsp of flour will thicken half a pint (284ml) of liquid.
    Some cooks thicken stews at the end of cooking with cornflour or arrowroot. I think that these agents add a null quality, but in that view