Slow-cooked Mexican Beef Stew: Worth it or Waste of Time?

I get weekly emails from Saveur.com with dinner suggestions for the week. A recent one had a Mexican beef stew that involved ripe plantains (I'm a maduro maniac!), pineapple (I've never turned down pineapple in my life), green apple (another fave), and some other good stuff. How could I resist? But there was a catch--the stew required eight hours in the oven. Could I commit? Could I remember to get it started before noon? I was up to the challenge.

Around ten, I started prepping all my fruits and veggies, but was distracted as my sister gave birth to her new son. (Congrats!) It's hard to chop and dice while getting details over the phone. So...unfortunately, my stew didn't make it into the oven till around noon. I complained to my mother about the delay, and she said I was crazy for making an eight-hour stew, "Just pop it in the pressure cooker and it'll be done in forty-five minutes."

As an aside, this is the fundamental difference in my mother's and my cooking philosophies. I (usually) view cooking as an enjoyable, relaxing activity, and I (usually) don't mind if it takes a while to pull a dish together. My mother looks at cooking as something that should be done as quickly as possible--hence her love of the pressure cooker. I admit, I use my pressure cooker from time to time. It's a godsend when I need to cook mashed potatoes and I've forgotten about it till there are just minutes left on my roast. Beans? Throw 'em in there, and they'll be done in no time. But my beef stew with all those fruits? I don't want to imagine what the pineapple and plantains would end up like. (Confession: after all the hours in the oven, the pineapple and plantains were pretty hard to identify.)

I don't think I altered the recipe at all, so follow the link to find it here. So was it worth all the hours? The husband certainly thought so. I liked it, but didn't love it. Then again, I'm not one to rave about beef stew. I found the ancho flavor to be overpowering, so next time, I might cut down on that. I might also increase the pineapple, because I wanted more of that flavor. All in all, though, it was a good, hearty meal, and a nice change from typical beef stew. I really don't think I've ever eaten anything with flavor quite like it.