Beef Stew with Garlic and Prunes

My assistant Anne and I, shattered, stopped for lunch in a dusty, unkempt village on a busy main road that was overshadowed by a cathedral or perhaps a monastery on the top of the hill behind. We had just had the most exhilarating drive over the Spanish Pyrenees, skipping across the roof of the world in an open-topped car. Massive vistas, empty roads, terrifying bends, precipitous descents, the sun high in the big blue sky. Anyway, I was wrecked as I had been doing all the