Great food delivered to your home, with the surprise factor!

The Divine Plate delivers healthy meals weekly to some of our favorite clients. Frequently, clients will ask me what will be on next week’s menu and I can’t answer them! The menu develops as I shop. I purchase what’s fresh, looks good and buy local and organic whenever possible.

I have decided to start posting menus after they are delivered to give potential subscribers an idea of what they would get. Some subscribers get two meals a day for their whole family, some just a few meals for the week.  Of course, allergies and dietary restrictions can be taken into account.

If you’d like to get signed up for next week’s delivery just give me, Chef Brooke, a call at 775-560-0890.

Lunch and Dinner Home Meal Deliveries Week of August 22

• Seared Ahi tuna with a blueberry ginger sauce, accompanied by brown rice, and sautéed broccoli and carrots with toasted sesame seed

• Pork loin with stone ground mustard and maple syrup glaze accompanied by garlic sautéed snap peas and green beans, and blue cheese roasted figs

• Steak with roasted blue cheese figs and rosemary smashed potatoes

• Quinoa shrimp salad with mixed greens

• Chicken fruit salad with chili pear dressing

• Ahi Tuna salad with a berry compote and dill lemon dressing

• Tuna casserole with snap peas, green beans and whole-wheat pasta

• Beef, broccoli, pepper, tomato whole grain pasta, side salad with raspberry balsamic vinaigrette  

• Chicken, pork and veggie stir-fry

• Salad with quinoa, veggies and beans

Maple & Mustard Pork Tenderloin with Rosemary Potatoes

I don’t think anyone is going to ever accuse me of being a great blogger. When I get caught up in the excitement of creating and putting out the food, I forget to take blog pictures and generally don't realize it until end of the meal. However, I did manage to snag a picture of this simple yet very delicious pork from a wedding buffet I did recently.

Pork tenderloin – usually tenderloins come two to a pack. On average, one feeds three to four people.

I will give you amounts for one tenderloin and just increase for more. You really can’t mess this one up.

1/3 C stone ground mustard

1 C Grade B maple syrup – you may use Grade A maple syrup if you can’t get Grade B, but B has a darker richer flavor which works really well for this recipe

1/2 t onion powder

1/2 t garlic powder 

sea salt and pepper to taste

Whisk together mustard and syrup in a pot, then put on medium heat to reduce down a little.

Remove any silver skin from the tenderloin, season with: onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt and pepper.

Heat an oven safe skillet (if you don’t have an oven safe skillet, you may transfer tenderloin from skillet to oven safe pan) on the stove to medium high with a little bit of olive oil, sear the tenderloin till nice brown on all sides.

Once seared, pour half the glaze on the tenderloin and put in a 425º preheated oven, cook for 10 minutes, pour rest of glaze on and then cook an additional 5 to 10 minutes.

Remove and let sit for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing. Pour the sauce from the pan over the tenderloin before serving

Rosemary Potatoes

Redskin (cut in 1/4) or fingerling potatoes (cut in half)

Rosemary salt (see below)

Olive oil

This is great served with a rosemary, salt roasted potato. Use either redskins – quarter (try to cut to uniform sized pieces) or a fingerling style potato – halved (try to cut to uniform sized pieces).

You will need rosemary salt – you may purchase or make your own. To make your own, use a coarse ground sea salt, approximately ½ C, plu 1 Tbls dried rosemary. Put in a food processor and pulse till blended, best if you can make in advance and let the flavors blend.

Toss the cut potatoes with olive oil sprinkle with rosemary sea salt (you won’t use all of it unless you are making a lot of potatoes). Place in single layer on a sheet tray, put into a heated oven, at least 350º but may be put into a hotter oven, cook until golden brown and a little crisp.

      

Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Chocolate Bars

Last year on my work-cation at the beach, the great debate was about what defines a “chocolate cake”? My “Southern” friends state a chocolate cake is a yellow-based cake with chocolate frosting. Well, this year our debate centered around peanut butter. I’ll start by saying I am an “all natural”,  “crunchy” fan. Second choice is all natural creamy. I was able to get one vote for my preference, but I have a feeling the voter just wanted to stay on the good side of the chef. The rest of the group was divided almost 50/50 for Jiff creamy and Peter Pan crunchy.

In honor of those who don’t agree with me, I am offering a recipe that calls for a creamy peanut butter and, dare I say, it works better with the “non natural” brands. If you want to use all natural, drain off any extra oil that has separated out. These bars are very addictive, so make extra and freeze them, just cut before you freeze.

Bars

6 cups Rice Crispies (or off brand)

10 oz bag marshmallows

3 Tbls butter

Using microwave melt butter in glass bowl, add marshmallows and melt, stir in Rice Crispies. Spread mixture into a well greased 9 ½ x 11 dish. Let cool, may refrigerate if necessary.

Peanut butter topping

1 ½ pounds powdered sugar

1 pound peanut butter (less oily, the better)

½ pound butter (room temperature)

Place all ingredients into a bowl and combine by hand. I usually glove up and mix with my hands, otherwise the powder sugar tends to go flying. Once thoroughly mixed spread the peanut butter topping on the cooled Rice Crispies.

Chocolate topping/base

24 ounce chocolate chips melted

one square inch paraffin wax (this wax is edible) melted

You can cut and dip the bottom of the bar in chocolate, or just spread chocolate on top then cut. You can also use whatever chocolate you prefer from semi sweet to dark.

Combine ingredients, then dip (place on wax paper to cool) or spread.

Second method: temper your chocolate and proceed with desired method