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

Asian Lettuce Wraps - Light summer fare

Looking for a refreshing summer dish? You can make this dish with or without cooking by purchasing a rotisserie chicken from a grocery store. If you purchase, there will be leftovers for another meal, or you can roast your own chicken. For my Asian/Oriental dishes I have found most grocery stores carry all that I need. That said, shopping at the Asian markets offers a wider selection and I can usually make the dish for half the price. Our local market has expanded their selection to include a wider selection of brown rice style noodles and organic fare. 
Asian Lettuce Wraps

Makes enough for approximately 4

3 ounces bean thread (cellophane) noodles (I like to use the brown rice ones when available)

¼ cup fine chopped cilantro

1/8 to ¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce

1 heaping Tablespoon chile paste with garlic

2 teaspoons dark sesame oil

2 teaspoons fish sauce

2 cups chopped roasted skinless chicken

Romaine or Boston lettuce leaves, approx 12

Cover bean thread noodles with extra hot water.  Let stand for 5 minutes or until softened. Drain and rinse under cool water.  Once drained thoroughly chop noodles, ½ inch or smaller.

Combine in a separate bowl cilantro, 1/8 cup soy sauce, chile paste, sesame oil and fish sauce. Add chopped noodles and chicken to soy sauce mixture, toss well to coat, may add additional soy sauce if needed.  Spoon mixture on to lettuce leaves. 

This dish may be made in advance and kept refrigerated for a few days.

  

Working, playing and eating well in North Carolina.

After a wonderful time in Indiana, cooking for a bride and groom who have to have the best attitude I have ever encountered – even with an epic thunderstorm that took down the wedding tent they were able to smile – I made my annual summer trek to North Carolina.

This year’s work-cation, cooking for a former employer while he and his family vacation at a Duck beach house, is extended a little this year and I will be away from home over a month. Hopefully I will get some blogging done and some recipe’s posted for everyone.

Each year when I come to North Carolina I am told to cook-whatever sounds good and I have a blast re-inspiring my culinary creativity. I also have the opportunity to go out and have a fabulous meal or two prepared for me. This year’s ‘dinner out’ blew my socks off, well it would have had I been wearing socks instead of cute sandals–we are at the beach.

The whole vacationing gang (20 of us) went to The Leftbank, a four-diamond rated restaurant in Sanderling, North Carolina just north of Duck. In a word–WOW. I’ll do my best to describe what I had and will try to post the menu so you can see what was available. I need to mention the sweetbreads that I did not order, but someone at the table did and allowed me to have a taste. When done right, these are amazing and the glaze on them with the garlic scape soubise was incredible.

1st course

I started my meal out with Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras Two Ways. The two preparations; a pâté with a salted caramel corn dust and passion fruit vinegar then seared on a Georgia peach compote. Both were served with brown butter madelines, incredible flavors and melt in your mouth textures.

2nd course

Being a chef, I suppose I should be an adventuresome eater and I do try, but I have a wee bit of a hang-up if my food looks back at me or actually resembles the animal itself. So I was very excited the Ashley Farms North Carolina Rabbit had been deconstructed. When the plate came out I wasn’t sure where to start it all looked amazing – there was a small loin with coffee “crumbs”, a lumpia wrapped ragout little ribs with a rabbit jus all accompanied with sunchoke, pickled cherries, baby heirloom carrots and watercress gelée “buttons”. Each bite was a unique treat for the taste buds.

3^rd course

We were down to the wire now, as some of our party were going to try to make The Green Lantern showing so we scrambled and ordered quickly and now my brain kicks in and I remembered to get some photos. I ordered the “Potted” Berries served rather whimsically in a little terra cotta pot. This desert might have been “cute”, but it certainly delivered layers of serious flavor. The base was an almond cake that didn’t mess around and was willing to let you taste the almond flavor, topped with a light vanilla mousse–real vanilla beans were used to make this beauty–sprinkled with “chocolate earth”. These were no crumbled Oreo’s, but light, crunchy cookies of yummy dark chocolate. All this topped with fresh berries and a quenelle of homemade berries sorbet and you have your own little pot of heaven – must be eaten by inserting spoon all the way to the bottom lifting up and getting a bit of each layer.

A few at our table had the Dark Chocolate Cremeux – a caramelized white chocolate ganache, vanilla ice cream, toasted hazelnuts. This dessert melted in your mouth then danced across the taste buds as the dark chocolate quenelle preceded the ice cream and white chocolate ganache.

Hats off to Chef de Cuisine Travis Lee Robinson and his team at The Leftbank and no need to worry those in our party going to The Green Lantern made it no problem, though they didn’t order any popcorn!        

     

From the Health Meals series - Pad Thai

A few of my Healthy Meals clients have requested some of my recipes.  So we will be posting some of them occasionally.  These meals are all based on whole grains, low fats, nothing artificial, and whenever possible I use organic and locally sourced food.

Some of these recipes will have two ingredient options, one is from the detox meals (the italics and bolded ingredient) we did which was a very restricted diet the other is still healthy just not quite as restricted.

Pad Thai

The easiest way to do this recipe is to cook everything separately then toss all together.  You don’t have to use separate pans, using the same pan – cook then set each item aside until ready to combine.

This recipe can easily be adjusted, if you like more shrimp or chicken go for it!

You may use a wok or a large sauté pan.

1 lb Pad Thai rice noodles

8 shrimp

1 chicken breast

3 eggs

2T+ chili oil

1/4C+ sesame oil

4 T fish sauce

1/3 c low sodium soy sauce or plum coconut vinegar

salt & white pepper

olive oil

¼ c peanuts or cashews

scallions

bean sprouts

lime

Soak Pad Thai noodles – found at an Asian market for cheap or in a supermarket, usually in with the Asian foods – drain when pliable

Peel and devein shrimp, sauté in light olive oil with a dash of chili oil (set aside).

Cut chicken breast into 1-inch strips, sauté in light olive oil with a dash of chili oil (set aside).

Whisk eggs with a dash of chili oil, pinch of salt and white pepper. Grease pan with a little olive oil over medium heat, pour eggs in and allow to cook like a pancake. Remove when cooked and slice into strips.

Chop nuts.

Now time to assemble:

With pan on medium heat add low sodium soy sauce or plum coconut vinegar-(available at Whole Foods), ¼ C sesame oil, fish sauce 2 Tbls chili oil, whisk then add the noodles – cook for 5 minutes tossing to coat noodles, then add rest of ingredients toss to mix cook for approximately 5 minutes till everything is warm. Garnish with sliced scallions, bean sprouts and lime wedges.

Italian ricotta cake with stawberry sauce

This ricotta cake recipe comes from Chef Paolo Labao whose cooking class I attended in September at Arte Italia in Reno. He calles it a cake, but I consider it more of a tarte. It is simple, delicately sweet and goes well at an end of a heavy meal. If you want to sample the Chef's fare for yourself, you can visit his
restaurant Farina in San Francisco.

Ricotta cake

300gr/10.5 oz OO flour

200gr/7 oz butter

1 egg

100gr/3.5 oz sugar

pinch baking powder

lemon zest from one lemon

Using two fingers, mix above ingredients together (do not over mix)

Line a spring form pan with parchment paper

Push dough into pan to form crust

320gr/11.2 oz sheep’s ricotta

120gr/4.2 oz sugar

lemon zest from one lemon

½ tsp vanilla

2 egg yolks

1 whole egg

Mix together until thoroughly blended

Pour into crust

Bake at 360º for ½ an hour

2 C sliced strawberries

1 Tbls powdered sugar

½ Tbls lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a blender

Blend on slow then high till smooth

Strain through fine sieve strainer

To plate:

Put a couple of Tbls of sauce on plate, place a slice of cake on plate, sprinkle powdered sugar over top