A celiac friend of mine told me once over a glass of natural wine that if she could quit her job and do anything in the world, she’d buy a stone cottage in England.
“But what would you do?” I asked.
“Make jam.”
I nodded. Sounded reasonable. “But what would you do in winter?”
“Make bread…Gluten-free bread,” she answered.
Unfortunately, life is busy. People work hard. And dreams like this might as well be made of marshmallow fluff, for all the substance in them. Sure, we say that we can make the time for things we really care about, but who (employed and in her right mind) has time for all that home-cooking?
Solution: Maurin Cuisine, a healthy catering service based in Montreal’s Mile End.
Maurin Arellano Frellick is a one-woman operation. She works out of La Centrale Culinaire, a shared kitchen space on Casgrain. Since 2013 she’s been dreaming up weekly menus (soups, salads, vegetarian and non-vegetarian main courses and desserts) and hand-delivering them to a mix of loyal and new customers – families and individuals – some of whom don’t even look at the menu and just take an order every week on faith.
She also does a weekly special delivery on Sunday to a group of nuns.
“I love helping people not just eat better but also source their ingredients more locally and seasonally,” she says. “My customers don’t have to think about it too much. Food is there. Ready. All they do is reheat.”
How it Works
“I send the menus out on Thursday,” she says. “That’s when everyone orders. I shop on the weekend and I deliver Monday to people’s offices or homes in Westmount, Côte-des-Neiges, Mile End, Plateau and the Sud-Ouest.” That way nothing is ever frozen, she never buys too much or wastes food, and, unlike most normal people (aka “not chefs”), she takes Saturdays off.
On her days “on,” she criss-crossing the globe with quality versions of everything from Vietnamese style meatloaf with papaya salad to vegetable-loaded sweet potato enchiladas, mushroom risotto, saffron-roasted chicken, chorizo paella, homemade gnocchi, and buttered rum pie.
The week I tried her out, this was the menu:
I figured it would be impossible for her to accommodate my dietary restrictions (gluten and dairy), but she said no problem. Normally, I’d be skeptical, but I’d tasted her food at Foodie Potlucks at La Gare and at Restaurant Day last fall and I’d heard great things about her through our mutual friend Melissa Simard, the founder of ‘Round Table Tours, where I worked part-time giving food and bike tours this past summer.
All this to say, I was already biased in her favour. And anyone who makes me a gluten-free cake is already in my good books. But I was also willing to throw our newfound friendship on the line by trying to objectively test her food and meal service.
What I Loved
1. The quality ingredients.
Most of the ingredients are organic. She buys them through a bulk organic ordering company called Club Organic. Her pork (a generally low quality meat at the grocery store) usually comes from Porcmeilleur in the Jean Talon Market, which sources its meat from a family farm in Ste-Madeleine, Montérégie. And she favours local cranberries and maple syrup over imports like pineapple and sugar – she even lists her purveyors on her website.
2. She makes all her soup stocks and sauces from scratch.
3. She’s not afraid of vegetables. The ham dish came with one tray of maple-mustard ham and a second full tray of roasted sweet potatoes and perfectly cooked green beans.
3. Her prices. They’re incredibly reasonable. It’s $12.50 per meal + tax. There are three meal choices per week and there’s always a vegetarian option (see above: ham, lamb merguez sausage or vegetarian gratin) and you can add on a soup or a salad ($10 for four portions of salad or a litre of soup) or dessert ($3-$4 per portion).
FYI: Maurin says she makes about 45-90 main courses per week plus soup, salad and desserts. That’s a lot of merguez.
I got the entire menu, which would normally come to $37.50 for the three mains, plus $20 for the soup and salad and $4 for the dessert (for a total of $61.50). I split the meal with one other person and I had leftovers for days. The individual servings are too big for one person (unless you’re a rock climber with the metabolism of Michael Phelps), and the soup was my lunch for most of the week.
4. She’s eco-friendly. She uses mason jars and aluminium-lined oven-safe dishes instead of plastic containers or tupperware.
5. The freshness. The food is prepared in advance, but it arrives chilled and ready to be reheated, so they’re not soggy and overcooked by the time she delivers them. She writes the baking instructions on the top of the dish (e.g. 15-20 minutes at 350˚F) so you can pop them straight into the oven. No need to transfer them to a baking dish, even. You could also transfer the food to a plate in reheat in the microwave if you’re really time-pressed – but then you wouldn’t get that crisp topping on the gratin or cake. So we popped everything in the oven and heated up some soup while we waited.
Speaking of the soup…
…boy I loved that peppery and creamy (dairy-free) soup, thickened with potato and puréed to a rich and warm potage. The small, wild mushrooms snapped between my teeth and the pepper made it burn just right.
The rice salad would have been awesome with feta. The juicy olives (mercifully not from a can) were fresh and could convince someone who didn’t like olives to start liking olives.
Ham, beer, mustard and maple make me believe in polyamory.
And my favourite part of the menu was actually the spinach in the gratin. Instead of wilted frozen junk, it was bright green, silken and delicious. The dish would have been better with real cheese instead of a lactose-free, vegan cheese, but it was broiled and crispy and salty – everything the spinach and fennel needed.
The best part of the crumble was the crispy edges, where maple syrup had soaked and then baked, caramelizing the tips of the cake. I hunted through it for the cranberries to counterbalance the sweetness, essentially tearing the cake to pieces, to the dismay of my dining partner and the joy of my stomach and spirit.
How To Order
Go to her website and sign up. You can also stop by the kitchen for lunch to test out her meals on Mondays and Thursdays between 11:45am and 1:30pm (5333 Casgrain, suite 311).
She also caters 5 à 7s, lunches and dinners, and pops up at food fairs, Restaurant Days, and charity events. And she offers cooking classes (I passed on some of my sushi making classes to her when I was too busy) and gift certificates for her meal delivery service. Coming soon, she says, is a restorative post-pregnancy menu for women and their families.
Great article! Thank you, merci, gracias from Maurin’s mama.