Sunday lunch – Caterer’s style

It’s been a while since I did a ‘Sunday lunch’ post; you remember, the posts featuring the Sunday lunches I cook for my mother. I haven’t stopped doing it, but the way in which I cook our Sunday lunches has changed since my mother started having mobility problems in the beginning of May. She hasn't left her house since, except for the odd walk in the garden. She’s using a 4-wheel walking-aid which makes it impossible to tackle stairs.

She has also stopped cooking Saturday lunch for me, which now puts me in charge of providing lunch on Saturday and Sunday … caterer’s style. Meaning, I prepare as much as I can in my kitchen, put everything (nice and hot) in a large carrier bag, and walk the 25 or so metres to my mother’s house, where she has laid the table and is waiting for me to arrive with lunch. Very often there are some finishing touches – like grilling a steak or sautéing the pre-boiled new potatoes – which I do ‘on location’.

On Saturday I try to keep it simple: a salad, an ‘assiette anglaise’, a ‘pain bagnat’ with smoked salmon, or – like yesterday – a big hamburger bun with all its trimmings. It was the first time in her 85 years of life that my mother had a hamburger presented that way. And to my surprise she actually enjoyed it!

During the week, a local caterer delivers a lunch ‘à domicile’. It is packed in plastic containers which snugly sit in a re-usable black Styrofoam box. Every weekday, when the caterer drops of the ‘plat du jour’ he recuperates the black box from the day before. The caterer also has a café/restaurant. I once had a pre-luncheon drink there when the employees in charge of the deliveries (there are two rounds) came back with the day’s empty boxes (it was around 1 p.m.) and the number of boxes was impressive! At least 30 to 40 per round. That makes it +/- 80 lunches to prepare and deliver every day … at 8 euro/lunch (offering very good value for money).

The lunch includes a bowl of soup, a main course (meat or fish, vegetables, (mostly mashed) potatoes and a (pre-packed) industrial desert). My mother is very satisfied with the quality of the meals and eats and finishes them with good appetite … or at least that is what she is telling me. She does find some a vegetables a bit disappointing though. They are not fresh, but tinned. Which is a bit of a shame in summer when there are so many fresh veggies available at really bottom prices. But I guess the cost of cleaning, washing, chopping and preparing these veggies is too labour intensive.

My mother therefore always welcomes my weekend ‘concoctions’. Last week I made cauliflower in a cheesy béchamel sauce and home-made ‘cordon blue’, for which I used freshly and thinly sliced veal scallops, San Daniele cured ham and Gruyere cheese.

Some of the ingredients for today's Sunday lunch:
chopped string beans, garlic butter and Châteaubriand steaks.

Today I’m doing grilled steak, finely chopped, last-minute boiled string beans with melted ‘ail et fines herbes’ butter, served with sautéed new potatoes.