Sam's First Beef Stew

Sorry guys for being a bit quiet of late, we seem to have let things on the food blog front dwindle recently. But don't worry, we are back on top of things, and will be updating you with more new dishes, particularly since it is the Easter break, one of the best times of the year for cooking.
But first, let me start with one of Sam's last creations, traditional English beef stew (would you believe it, it's Jamie Oliver again). This particular dish was taking new risks and heading into unknown territory, since it involves preparation of all of the ingredients earlier in the day, and popping them all into the oven in a casserole dish for a good 3 or 4 hours. Since I was busy during the day, I was unable to be on hand and supervise all the preparation (or in Sam's terms "nag the whole time"), and so I could not be sure if all of the steps would be done correctly, and according to health and safety rules (Sam - "But that's the point of cooking, surely, to kill all the bacteria anyway?").
Nevertheless, after a few instructions via the internet mainly to inform about the location of specific ingredients or equipment, Sam was on his way, and the dish was cooking before I even got home.

After much trepidation, at 7:00pm, we tested the meat to see if it was cooked. The meat was very soft and tender, and broke apart with a fork as expected, and surprisingly it was every bit as delicious as expected, and more! All of the flavours blended in really well together and the meat was cooked to perfection. This dish was so successful, we have now cooked it twice, and the only downside we've managed to find so far is that there never seems to be enough of it! We'll have to make the full amount for 4 (or just 2 hungry) people next time.
The picture doesn't really do it much justice - this isn't a dish to look at, rather give you a warm fuzzy feeling on a cold day :) 8/10