Do you plan to cut that chuck roast up into shank slice-sized pieces, or just do it whole? (I don't know how well braising can reach into big hunks of meat.) Fabio's recipe looked pretty easy to me, other than the assumption that we all have a quart of demi glace already sitting in the fridge!

But that's okay. I can just make up some 4X concentrated beef stock using beef base from a bottle. Seems a bit redundant to add espagnole sauce to that, since we already have the veggies and tomato paste in the bed. Maybe just make a lot of veggies, and use half for the bed and half for the demi glace?