Haute at home City restos offering make-at-home meal kits with a gourmet touch By: Alison Gillmor Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/07/2020 (2145 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As restaurants navigating a global pandemic look for creative ways to connect with diners, some venues are offering take-home meal kits.

With prepped ingredients and how-to instructions, these hybrid home-cooking experiences combine some of the pleasures of restaurant dining with some of the satisfactions of DIY.

Basically, the restaurant does most of the hard or time-consuming stuff — shopping, prepping, measuring, chopping, maybe even a full make-ahead on sides or sauces. The at-home cook is left with most of the easy and fun stuff — a little sautéeing, a little assembling. (And since so much of the meal prep has been done ahead, the clean-up is also quicker. After these dinners, I was left with plates, cutlery and maybe a pot or two, instead of my usual kitchen explosion.)

For novice cooks, meal kits can be a good way to get some kitchen guidance. For seasoned cooks, they can be a good way to bust out of those same-old same-old cooking ruts.

And for anyone who cares about food, they’re another way to support the Winnipeg restaurants we love.

FUSION GRILL

(550 Academy Rd., fusiongrill.mb.ca, 204-489-6963)

WHAT WE GOT: All the ingredients for a three-course pickerel dinner ($75 plus tax), including fish fillets, herbed cornmeal for the crust, local red potatoes for roasting, vegetables for steaming, tartar sauce, a big salad with interesting add-ins and a sea buckthorn vinaigrette, as well as two pieces of mascarpone cheesecake with accompanying crème anglaise, a Port and berry sauce and even cheerful little edible flowers for garnish. Billed as a dinner for two, this pack comfortably fed three adults.

Everything in this big, detail-oriented paper bag of food was neatly packaged and clearly labelled. And when I say “everything,” I mean everything, right down to a tiny container of cooking oil for the fish.

Fusion’s emphasis on prairie ingredients means you get some lovely foods that might take a bit of sourcing if you were buying them yourself: hemp hearts, Saskatoon berries, bee pollen, lettuce from Braman’s Greens, fish from Bearcat Fisheries on Lake Kisseynew.

Chef Lorna Murdoch’s instructions are both clear and encouraging (“You can do this!”). Since timing is everything, she tells you when to get the fish in the oven and the veg on the boil so everything comes out at once.

For an added restaurant-style flourish, she emphasizes presentation: telling you how to mound the potatoes, arrange the vegetables and then layer the fish, the tartar sauce and microgreen garnish.

I felt pretty darn good about my finished dish — and my family was particularly impressed with the fancy plating.

TESTER’S NOTES: I picked up my pack the day before: The fish fillets, which are flash-frozen, then thawed in the fridge overnight.

Chef Lorna wisely points out in the instructions that “ovens are like kids. No two are exactly alike.” That advice helped in navigating cooking times, especially with my old electric stove (bought at Eatons!).

BONUS POINTS: The instructions are unfailingly upbeat. Plus, Chef Lorna suggests you start the cooking process by cracking open a bottle of wine. I like the way she thinks.

---

LITTLE GOAT

(2615 Portage Ave., littlegoat.ca, 204-254-4628)

WHAT WE GOT: This friendly family-run St. James’s bistro specializes in French comfort food, and is currently offering several pickup options: prepared foods from the larder, fully prepared family suppers, barbecue packs, as well as a “mise en place” option.

Changing every week, the mise en place ($75 plus tax) features complete ingredients for a classic French dish, prepped to cook at home and feed four people.

Our pack for choucroute garni included chopped onion and bacon lardons, smoked pork chops, house-made pork sausages, a jar of sauerkraut, potatoes, spices, herbs, and even salt and pepper, along with mustard, pickled cukes and sourdough bread buttered and ready for toasting. There was also a cold bottle of Riesling, with one cup used for cooking (and the rest for drinking).

Chef Alex Svenne offers some background on the recipe sheet. Choucroute garni originated in the Alsace region, which historically has been fought over by various German states and France, with culinary influences from both sides. The dish became popular in Paris bistros after the arrival of refugees from the Franco-Prussian war.

I’ve long thought about trying this storied dish but never gotten around to it, so this easy cook-at-home intro was just what I needed. The results were tasty and complex, with the acidity of the sauerkraut, the sharpness of the Smak Dab mustard, the transparently thin-cut cukes cutting all that porky richness.

TESTER’S NOTES: Ever anxious, I could have used a bit more detail in the recipe. (How long to sauté the onions — softened? golden? browned?). But with ingredients this good cooking up in what is basically a one-pan dinner, it all worked out fine.

BONUS POINTS: While modestly billed as a dinner for four, this was a massively meaty amount of food. I brought a groaning platter to the table, and it wasn’t even half of the dish. (We later used some leftover sausages for a weekend breakfast fry-up.)

 

---

 

PEASANT COOKERY

(283 Bannatyne Ave., peasantcookery.ca, 204-989-7700)

WHAT WE GOT: The Peasant Cookery Backyard BBQ pack ($60 plus tax) was the easiest supper yet, perfect for a hot summer weekend evening. The restaurant also offers takeout “wine and dine” picnics.

The BBQ pack menu may be straightforward, but this is a decidedly upmarket take on cookout food. Our box included four hamburger patties, tender brioche buns, smoked cheddar, and very good fixings, like house-made condiments and onions two ways — sliced raw and deeply caramelized. (That last addition is a real time-saver: a common food blog accusation is that recipes always lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions.)

We also got a container of dilly potato salad and – last but not least, especially when it’s 30 C out — six cold beers.

This very good supper didn’t take much work at all. Mostly, it involved setting things out while the burgers cooked on our old-school charcoal grill.

BONUS POINTS: The six-pack of local craft brews (from Barn Hammer, Stone Angel, Torque, One Great City and Winnipeg Brew Werks) included a few we hadn’t tried — or even seen — before. It was like a mystery gift bag for grownups.