Driving here and there for my weekly fix

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Side dishes such as these are one of the best parts of a Korean meal, though no North Jersey restaurant serves them in such abundance.

The vibrant colors and flavors of Korean food are hard to match, and I try to enjoy them every week, keeping prepared items in my refrigerator and eating out in new and old places.


I am also really loving the "The Kimchi Chronicles" on Thirteen, a PBS TV station in New York.


The series explores Korean dishes prepared with meat, poultry, fish, vegetables and tofu -- in restaurants and in the kitchen.


On Saturday, I had dinner at East Seafood Restaurant on Grand Avenue in Palisades Park, where the windowless dining room is below street level, under a billiard hall.


This place is off the beaten path in Palisades Park, which has more Korean restaurants than any other town in North Jersey, but it has been around for years.


Now, it has a new name, and the waitress said it has a new owner.


Unfortunately, the new owner not only just stretched a banner over the old name on the outside of the building, he left untouched the worn interior and linoleum floor I remember from a lunch a few years ago.


That's too bad, because the spicy monk-fish stew, or tang, I chose included eight side dishes, including a small grilled fish in a sweet-and-sour sauce ($14.99).


This is also the only restaurant I know with large tanks of live fish, lobster and abalone. You can ask for a small fluke to be served to you raw as sashimi. 


(The New York Times reported in 2004 it is illegal in the United States to serve raw fish unless it has been frozen first to kill parasites.)


I had hoped I could order one of the live fish and grill it on the table, as I saw Koreans do in the "The Kimchi Chronicles," but I couldn't.


After I ordered the monk-fish stew, I received a small bowl of rice porridge and six side dishes -- cabbage kimchi, seasoned scallions, pickled jalapeno peppers, crunchy cooked broccoli, bean sprouts and sweetened black beans.


Later, the waitress brought me the small, whole fish and steamed rice. The stew contained tofu and a head-on shrimp, in addition to monk fish and vegetables.


"Dong Hae Restaurant" appears on the credit-card slip. Whatever it's called, I won't be going back.


East Seafood Restaurant, 445 Grand Ave., Palisades Park;
 201-461-4447. Valet parking, liquor license.


Korean food at home


Earlier Saturday, I drove to H Mart in Fort Lee for some of my favorite prepared dishes.


Stewed wild-caught Alaska pollock ($5.99) and stewed tofu ($3.49) are seasoned with scallions and onions or garlic; red pepper, sesame oil or soy sauce, and sesame seeds.


Kimbap is a sliced sushi roll of seaweed, seasoned rice, crunchy vegetables and crab, garnished with a few Korean pickles ($4.99).


A few pieces of tofu and kimbap, warmed in the microwave, made for a tasty breakfast today.


Web site:  H Mart

Salt in Costco Wholesale almonds, Trident Seafood fish sticks

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Blanched almonds, like those sold at Costco Wholesale.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A half-dozen or so roasted almonds are one of my favorite snacks -- alone or with fruit and cheese -- and I rely on Costco Wholesale in Hackensack for these crunchy treats.

But in looking at labels, I've discovered that the more expensive Kirkland Signature Marcona blanched almonds from Spain have twice as much salt as the Kirkland dry-roasted almonds from California.

A 28-gram or 1-ounce serving of the Spanish almond contains 9% sodium, compared with 4% for the same serving size of the California almond (on the daily value scale). 

The former costs $7.99 for 17.63 ounces, while you'll pay $8.89 for 40 ounces of the latter. They are both delicious.

I believe Costco sells a 3-pound bag of raw, unsalted almonds, but I've never bought them or checked out the label. Next time.

Update (2015)

For the last couple of years, we've been buying the raw almonds at Costco to cut down on our sodium intake, and roasting them in the oven at 275 degrees for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

After they cool, we put them in a container on our kitchen counter and dust them with plenty of ground Saigon Cinnamon, also available at Costco.

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Fish shtick

Costco is the only retailer I know that publishes a magazine, and the February 2011 issue  of Costco Connection has an upbeat story on Trident Seafoods, the Seattle, Wash., company that supplies fish sticks and other products to the warehouse store.

I read about The Ultimate Fish Stick from Trident and asked my wife to pick up a package this week. Four pounds or 60 breaded fish sticks are $12.99. 

I prepared some last night. I found them tasty, but think the name is overblown. 

They are finger-length and cut from fillets of snow-white Alaska pollock, the largest wild fishery in the United States. 

Pollock tastes like cod, but is cheaper. Salted pollock, for example, retails for about half the price of salted cod.

A sad footnote is a 2008 incident that killed 120,000 wild king salmon when they were caught in pollock nets, according to "Four Fish, The Future of the Last Wild Food," a new book by Paul Greenberg.

The Trident package calls the fish sticks "crunchy" and "more fish, less breading." They are 65% fish, but they weren't crunchy. 

I didn't preheat the oven to 475 degrees, so that may have been a problem, though I baked them for much longer than indicated in the directions. 

Costco also sells Trident's tilapia-fillet fish sticks, but the package doesn't say whether they are made from farmed fish. They appear bigger than the pollock fish sticks. 


I've seen wild-caught tilapia at H Mart, the Korean supermarket chain, but most tilapia is farmed. It also is called St. Peter's Fish.