Copper River salmon now at a lower price

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The first wild sockeye salmon fillets from the famed Copper River in Alaska appeared on June 12 at the Costco in Hackensack. The price: $14.99 a pound. A few days later, wild king salmon from Alaska showed up, also $14.99 a pound.


Today, I went looking for king salmon for dinner, but found only the sockeye (photo). The surprise was a lower price: $11.99 a pound. Last year, Copper River salmon was sold for $9.99 a pound at Costco.


I also picked up a pound of Earthbound Farms organic spring mix ($4.49) and two pounds of those beautiful, round Campari tomatoes on the vine ($4.59) that are hot-house grown without herbicides. Pasta Prima-brand lobster ravioli were $11.99, enough to feed three at two meals.

Crab cakes that keep on giving

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Breakfast usually means an array of containers on my kitchen counter as I assemble a red-salmon-and-sardine salad sandwich for my son -- whole-grain toast spread with hummus and garnished with tomato, greens and cheese -- or plate leftovers for my own breakfast.


This morning, I continued to explore the seafood theme with leftover crab cakes from last night's dinner and a piece of beer-battered haddock from the night before. They just needed a few minutes in the microwave and a spritz or two of fresh lemon juice, plus tomato, organic salad greens and warm Syrian bread with more hummus to make a filling breakfast. 


The Maryland-style crab cakes are sold at Costco under the Phillips Seafood Restaurants name, and they are some of the best I have ever had. The first ingredient is crab meat, and the other components include sauce, white wine, Dijon mustard and egg whites. Surprisingly, the cakes contain high fructose corn syrup. Six crab cakes (3 ounces each) are $12.99, or about $2.15 a piece -- a bargain.

For dinner, I served the crab cakes with instant, red-skin mashed potatoes and steamed bok choy.


The wild-caught haddock came from a package of frozen Icelandic fish and chips I also found at Costco ($8.97 for two and a half pounds of fish and waffle fries, enough for three). Just add a salad to complete dinner.

Fish and greens for dinner tonight

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Fairway Market in Paramus has been advertising fresh whiting and porgy for only $2.99 a pound. But today, I found a special at H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Little Ferry: a pile of king whiting on ice at $1.79 a pound.


I bought four -- each about eight or nine inches long -- and had them cleaned with the head and tail on. Whiting is a wonderful, wild-caught fish that is on the menu of many soul food restaurants, where fillets are fried. It is also appreciated by Koreans, who, in flush times, used to receive small whiting among the free side dishes that accompany every meal.


My wife likes to bread them and fry them whole. The pearly, white flesh breaks away from the bone easily. But we also eat the skin and tail.


Before I selected the fish, I stopped at H Mart's Green Room, where a wide variety of Korean, Chinese and other greens chill on ice. I took advantage of another special: baby mustard greens at 69 cents a pound. I'll blanch the leaves and thick stems quickly in boiling water, then steam them with oil, soy sauce and fish sauce.

Friday is the start of  free-sample weekend at H Mart. I tried a spicy soup with thick noodles and fresh watermelon, but passed on the pork-and-vegetable dumplings.

Another great (meatless) meal at Wondee's

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We didn't get to Wondee's until 8:45 or so Saturday night, but we were lucky to get the last vacant table. My wife and I ate only seafood or vegetarian dishes at the Thai restaurant in Hackensack, where we pledged to go meatless on Feb. 28. But our 13-year-old son, celebrating his birthday, ordered wonton soup with sliced pork (he says it's the best he's ever had).

It was another great meal at one of our all-time favorites and we didn't miss meat. The value is outstanding. Wondee's is one of the few restaurants in North Jersey where a whole fish is priced at $16.95 (up recently from $14.95).


We ordered fried shrimp dumplings with a tasty plum sauce, mock duck salad (with crispy tofu instead of crispy duck), soft-shell crabs in Panang curry (a special) and pineapple fried rice with shrimp.


Everything was terrific, but we especially like the two big crabs (cut in four pieces) in the spicy curry, which was flecked with red pepper ($16.95). The dish included some crisp green beans and sweet pepper.


The fried rice dish is so much bolder than Chinese fried rice, which often is made from leftovers. Wondee's version includes big chunks of canned pineapple and three or four crunchy shrimp.


Our son didn't eat all of the sliced pork in his soup -- only the second or third time he has had meat in the two and a half months since we decided to give up meat and eat seafood.

Wondee's has a vegetarian menu and offers vegetarian versions of dishes with meat. For example, another special was a Thai summer roll with or without sweet sausage in tamarind sauce. But we got there too late; the kitchen was out of the meatless version.




Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 
296 Main St., 201-883-1700;  parking in rear
http://www.wondeenj.com/ 

On the way home from the shore, stop at The Fishery in South Amboy

Fort Hancock is part of the Sandy Hook National Recreation Area on the New Jersey Shore.

Editor's note: In 2016, The Fishery in South Amboy was no longer in business.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR


We drove down to Sandy Hook on Saturday for an open house at American Littoral Society headquarters and stopped on the way home for an early dinner at The Fishery in South Amboy (though I've always thought it was in neighboring Sayreville).


The squat building housing a fish market and restaurant on Route 35 has only 22 seats amid a simple decor of white tile and oversize fishing lures, but there's table service and a full menu of fresh and frozen seafood, including one-pound Brazilian lobster tails and colossal shrimp. 

Most of the interior is taken up by fish cases and the open kitchen.

Me, my wife and our son started with one dozen, steamed Little Neck clams ($9.95) in a broth with chopped tomato and parsley that I sopped up with garlic bread and scooped up with empty shells. 

Then, we each tried a different soup: lobster bisque, Maine lobster and corn chowder and Maryland crab and corn chowder ($3.50 or $3.95 for a cup). All were terrific.

Mateo, the Greek chef who bought The Fishery from the original owner about a year ago, buys his fish at the relocated Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx. He said so many different items are coming in now, after a lackluster winter, he feels as excited as a little boy shopping there.

But he excels in the simple grilling of fresh fish, and does less well when he tries something like the monkfish scampi with linguine I ordered off the specials blackboard ($14.95). 

My wife had some of my fresh fish and pasta -- which needed seasoning -- and also shared my son's selection, a platter of beautifully fried red snapper with Buffalo fries -- spicy potatoes under a blanket of mozzarella cheese (also $14.95).  

We enjoyed a side order of simply sauteed fresh spinach ($3.95), but wish the portion was larger.

As we were leaving, I noticed a whole red snapper nestled in ice I missed on the way in. That would have been terrific grilled with a Greek-style oil, lemon and oregano sauce on the side -- as we've had whole fish there before. 

I also wished I had room for the baklava or rice pudding.


One change we noticed on this visit was a printed menu with the South Amboy address, rather than  the familiar Sayreville, which separated from the former many years ago. Sayreville and the Raritan River are considered the start of the Jersey shore by many.


At the American Littoral Society open house in Fort Hancock, I got my first taste this year of fresh clams, but the man shucking these sweet mollusks said they were from Chesapeake Bay, not New Jersey. They were no less delicious.


The Fishery, 1812 Route 35 north and Midland Avenue, South Amboy, N.J.; 732-721-9100; open seven days.  

You may be able to bring your own wine. Please call ahead.

Wandering aimlessly through Whole Foods

Image by Dine.TO via Flickr

It's a pleasure to shop at Whole Foods Market in Paramus on Sundays. Parking spaces are easy to come by and you can wander through the store at your own pace. There are even a few free samples available -- bread, cheese and the like.

I drove the short distance from my home in Hackensack today for the second week in a row, and spent under $10, looking for sale items and ingredients for dinner tonight and tomorrow. Earlier, my wife drove to Englewood, where we once lived, and visited ShopRite and H Mart.

I love the fish department at Whole Foods, which pledges that all of its farmed seafood is drug-, hormone- and preservative-free. Last week, I bought two pounds of mussels, but forgot they were in the fridge, and they spoiled (I was in court all week). Today, I saw beautiful, whole whiting for $4.99 a pound; a shame, because my wife already bought whiting for a Jamaican fish tea at the Korean market.

In produce, I picked up organic red Swiss chard for $1.79 (about nine-tenths of a pound) that I will stir-fry tomorrow with West Soy seasoned wheat protein strips ($3.39 for 8 ounces) I picked up at Whole Foods last week. This pre-cooked vegan item is often referred to as "the meat of the wheat," the package says.

For tonight's dinner of farmed U-15 Black Tiger shrimp (Costco), giant rigatoni with pesto and salad, I bought a wide, ciabatta-like bread for $2.49 called sperlonga. (Photo: Black Tiger shrimp.)

I spoke to three other shoppers while I was at Whole Foods. All were pleasant, and two wished me "a beautiful day." Contrast that with the grimly determined shoppers at Fairway Market, a few miles away in Paramus, who turn up their noses at you and would just as soon run you down with their carts as speak with you.

Fishing for dinner at Costco

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Most of the money I spent at Costco in Hackensack on Thursday was for seafood.

Wild haddock fillets made a great dinner cooked in Mexican green salsa, spooned over steamed yellow rice and served with a salad.

 For breakfast and lunch sandwiches, I got a pound of smoked and sliced wild sockeye salmon from Alasaka  (photo) at $14.79. I refer to this as wild lox.

From the Seafood Road Show, I finally broke down and bought four pounds of frozen Black Tiger shrimp from Vietnam. These big shrimp, which are deveined, come 13 to 15 to the pound at $8.60 or so per pound. I haven't bought them before because they are farmed and that method of raising them has led to habitat destruction.

Unfortunately, Costco, unlike Whole Foods Market, provides little information about the farmed shrimp or fish it sells (beyond saying farmed salmon is artificially colored). Whole Foods says all of the farmed seafood it sells is drug-, hormone- and preservative-free.

Monotony is setting in

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My 12-year-old son was the first to use the word "monotony" to describe the meatless, fish-heavy meals we have been preparing at home for the past two weeks. Today, that word echoed in my head as I made my weekly trip to Costco in search of more variety.

I picked up Boca-brand soy burgers and frozen Maryland crab cakes at the Hackensack store, but passed on frozen mahi-mahi fillets and frozen Icelandic fish and chips, because I still have lots of frozen Pacific flounder and frozen Alaskan sockeye salmon, which I steamed in an Asian sauce and served with instant mashed potatoes and salad last night.

I walked warily past the Australian lamb I used to love to see what was in the fresh fish case, and startled a woman with a warning about the farmed salmon she was looking at. Damn. No fresh, wild-caught haddock, thick, meaty fillets that would be great fried -- my son's favorite preparation.

So, it looks like Maryland crab cakes (without the garnish shown in the photo above) and lots of frozen vegetables for dinner tonight. I'm not proud. If you have an idea for a meatless dinner, please pass it along.

More meat-free meals

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Fish and seafood have been our salvation during the meatless regimen we have been following for nearly two weeks.

This morning, I made a canned fish salad with yellowfin tuna (photo), sardines, chopped red onion, Dijon mustard, cumin and lemon juice, and put it on a sandwich spread with pesto. For dinner last night, we had flounder fillets in Mexican red sauce, black beans and yellow rice.

The Pasta Prima-brand lobster ravioli from Costco we prepared Wednesday evening were delicious with salad and wine.

On Friday, during an unscheduled visit to the Hackensack Costco, I found spinach patties and saw but didn't buy wild-salmon patties. (I have an unopened bag of sockeye salmon fillets from Alasaka in my freezer.)

How about this for dinner? Heat a spinach patty with thin-sliced Swiss cheese, top it with a salmon patty with same or different melted cheese, and spoon light tomato sauce over them.

Wild salmon in a box

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The boxes have been on my counter since Valentine's Day. Inside, there are 3-, 4- and 5-ounce portions of wild-caught Alaskan salmon, hardwood-smoked without preservatives.

The meaty fillets are in aseptic pouches, and the pouches are inside shrink-wrapped cardboard boxes. The fish doesn't require refrigeration -- one reason I don't feel compelled to eat it. That's a lot of packaging, and the boxes are much bigger than necessary. (Photo: Coho salmon.)

The other day, I assembled a breakfast sandwich on toasted baguette, opening one of the pouches and, after draining a little liquid, adding the fish to some sliced smoked wild salmon from Costco, hummus, tomato with za'atar thyme mixture and lettuce. As I ate, the only off note was the dry salmon fillet.

I bought the smoked fish from Kasilof Fish Co. of Marysville, Wash., online at www.iLoveSalmon.com.
Once it's gone, I don't think I'll get more.

In search of more meatless meals

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I made my weekly run to Costco in Hackensack today with the goal of  bolstering our meatless dinner choices, and came home with three different wild-caught fish and some wonderful-looking lobster ravioli.

I picked up a tray of fresh haddock fillets from Iceland at $7.49 a pound, frozen sockeye salmon fillets from Alaska ($25.89 for three pounds) and an item I hadn't seen before -- frozen Pacific flounder fillets ($8.69 for two pounds).

The lobster ravioli should provide two meals ($11.99). I looked at the ingredients, and Atlantic lobster is listed second, right after the flour to make the pasta.

At Balthazar Bakery later in the day, I bought a double baguette and hit the jackpot -- it was about 10 inches to 12 inches longer than usual, but the $4 price was the same. When I got it home, my wife, son and I stood around cutting off pieces and eating them with thin-sliced Swiss cheese.

For dinner tonight, I cooked the haddock in Mexican green salsa and opened a can of organic pinto beans from Whole Food Market, heating them in a small pot and adding non-salt seasoning and black pepper. We ate the fish, salsa and beans over steamed white rice with a salad.

Tomorow night, I plan to serve veggie patties with cheese, lettuce and tomato on onion-potato rolls from Balthazar. On Wednesday, we'll try the lobster ravioli in tomato sauce.


And it looks like our one meal out Saturday night will be at our favorite soft-tofu stew restaurant in Palisades Park. If we make it to Sunday, it will mark two weeks without meat (chicken, pork, beef or lamb).

Breakfasts have been easy. I've had eggs with Colombian corn cakes (arepas), hot oat meal with dried blueberries or a sandwich of wild smoked salmon with kimchi on the side. I've been trying to skip lunches, relying on black coffee or home-brewed espresso and crackers and cheese or fruit.

Shopping and tasting notes

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Say hello to haddock

I never know what I'll find in the seafood cases at Costco in Hackensack, where I shop weekly on Mondays or Tuesdays. Tonight, my wife coated thick, meaty wild-caught haddock fillets from Canada in Indian spices and flour, and fried them. Me and my son loved them. (Photo: haddock.)

On Tuesday, I first looked at and rejected lobster tails that had been treated with a preservative ($16.99 a pound). I also walked past the many trays of artificially colored farmed salmon and found the haddock among trays of wild-caught flounder (from Canada or Iceland). I bought a pound and a half or so of haddock at $7.49 a pound.

I also picked up a pound of preservative-free smoked wild sockeye salmon ($14.79). Costco also carries frozen Alaskan wild sockeye salmon fillets (about $8.50 a pound) , which we steamed for dinner Monday night.

Korean barbecue without the guilt

On Sunday morning, I pulled out two freezer bags with thin-sliced Australian beef in Korean bulgogi marinade. This was the free-range, grass-fed, antibiotic-free whole tenderloin sold at ShopRite under the Nature's Reserve label for as little as $3.99 a pound with a store card.

While the beef was defrosting, I went to H Mart in Little Ferry for two heads of red-leaf lettuce (two for $1), but couldn't find the scallion salad usually served with Korean barbecue. I cooked the beef on a stove-top grill with scallions and garlic, and served it with steamed Korean dumplings, white rice and kimchi -- we wrapped beef, garlic, kimchi and rice in lettuce and went to town.

Mexican dinner from a can

We eat a lot of Readington Farms chicken -- at least once or twice a week -- and in the freezer, I found a tray of wings and another of leg quarters I bought at ShopRite. The chickens are raised on vegetarian feed and without antibiotics. Unfortunately, rarely are they on sale.

We breaded the wings in chili spices and baked them at 375 degrees, but I pan roasted the leg quarters and then let them finish cooking in mildly spicy chipotle sauce and peppers. The sauce came in a 7-ounce can under the La Morena label; the peppers in adobo sauce in a similar can under the La Costena label. I found both at Hackensack Market.

I plated the chicken and plenty of sauce on top of yellow rice, and served them with a salad of organic sprinx mix.

What are oxymoronic shrimp?

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The latest sales circular from Fairway Market in Paramus offers jumbo shrimp for $6.99 a pound. They are described as U.S.A. caught, 16/20 count, "sweet and succulent," "super-fresh" and "oxymoronic."

Oxymoronic? I Googled the word and came across a discussion on line that it's an oxymoron to describe shrimp as jumbo. But not all shrimp are jumbo, as you quickly learn if you order a shrimp dish from a Chinese takeout restaurant and don't specify "jumbo."

So maybe Fairway is trying to distract us from noticing that these shrimp likely are farm-raised, which also may mean habitat destruction and unwholesome additives. It's always best to buy wild-caught shrimp and other seafood.

Strategies for avoiding beef

For the past month, we haven't knowingly eaten beef in a restaurant or at home, as we try to boost our already large intake of fish, pasta, vegetables and fruit.

We haven't been able to give up poultry, though, and rely on antibiotic-free chicken or turkey for home-cooked meals at least once a week. And we have had a couple of meals of naturally raised Australian lamb. But we also have had dinners of falafel and cheese-and-spinach ravioli, and try to eat a salad with every meal. We don't eat dessert, preferring fresh and dried fruit and nuts, though we occasionally eat sweet rice cakes or other cakes stuffed with red bean paste (Korean or Japanese).

Only my wife's and son's complaints prevent me from preparing pasta two times a week. And I usually have to serve it with drug-free chicken meatballs or sausage I get at Costco.

Having said all this, I did notice today that ShopRite will be putting on sale free-range, grass-fed whole beef tenderloin from Australia, for $4.99 a pound with a store card, from Dec. 6-12 at  the Rochelle Park, Paramus and Englewood stores. Average weight is 6 to 8 pounds. We have bought this beef in the past to prepare Korean barbecue, which used to be one of my son's favorite meals.

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A healthy, filling seafood meal

In one visit to H Mart in Little Ferry yesterday, I picked up fresh red snapper and blue crabs and two prepared fish dishes to make a bountiful meal for my family.

The seafood meal helped us to avoid beef  for another day. Both my wife and son say they want to eat less meat, including goat, oxtail and pork.

I had the fishmonger clean and cut up the wild-caught red snapper into small steaks, with the head and tail, and cooked them in a soup of cheap sake, soy and fish sauces, rice wine and vinegar. I poured the excess sauce over Hong Kong-style spinach noodles I boiled. The crabs, which snapped at my tongs in the store, were boiled separately in seasoned water with hot pepper. I also blanched and sauteed fresh collard greens left over from Thanksgiving.

Our appetizers were prepared whiting two ways: Korean-style pancakes and chunks of the small fish stewed with hot and sweet peppers. It was a great meal.

H Mart, 260 Bergen Turnpike, Little Ferry; 201-814-0400;
open seven days.

Tasting and shopping notes

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The block of smoked-mackerel sushi from Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater didn't disappoint. (See previous post.)  In fact, my wife, who squirms at the the thought of eating raw fish, loved the slices she tried. I ate mine without wasabi or soy sauce and they nicely set up our dinner of frozen wild sockeye salmon in a light Asian sauce.

I placed the frozen salmon (from Costco) in a glass plate set atop my steamer (it didn't fit inside), in a shallow pool of olive and sesame oils, fish sauce and cheap sake. I sprinkled salt on the fillets, rubbed them with coarse red Aleppo pepper and steamed them about 20 minutes for medium, serving the fish with leftover rice and peas, salad and pita bread.

The latest batch of Aleppo pepper I purchased from Fattal's on Main Street in Paterson is noticeably darker than what I had and noticeably spicier, a good thing. I keep it in a plastic container in the freezer and sprinkle it over eggs, fish and chicken, but wonder if the intensity fades over time.

I forgot to mention I bought aged Manchego sheep-milk's cheese from Spain at Costco the other day. The price, $8.29 a pound, is 70 cents less than the sale price at Fairway Market in Paramus and several dollars less than the regular price. Storage tip: Trim off the inedible rind, slice the wedge into three pieces and wrap each in plastic wrap before placing them in a freezer bag in the fridge. This also works with a large wedge of Reggiano Parmigiano.

North Jersey markets are running some good sales, starting today.  

Fairway Market has three pounds of herbicide-free Campari tomatoes for $5, three heads of organic romaine for $2.99 and Columbia supremo coffee for $4.99 a pound. Stop & Shop is reprising its sale on drug-free Australian shoulder lamb chops, $3.69 a pound for three pounds or more. And two markets on Railway Avenue in Paterson, El Campesino and El Rancho, are selling limes or lemons at 10 for 99 cents, 20 pounds of Canilla rice for $3.99, three cups of La Yogurt (6 ounces) for 99 cents, Lactaid milk for $4.99 (96 ounces) and Hass avocados, 2 for 99 cents.

If you think Paterson is going too far for food, stop first at Aleppo Restaurant, at Main and Thomas streets, or Hummus Restaurant across the street for a nice lunch, pick up Syrian bread and spices at Fattal's down the strteet, then go food shopping. Hungry food shoppers spend more, research has shown.