Eating in or out, Feast of the Seven Fishes is always the right choice

Fresh-water carp cooling their tails on the fish counter at the H Mart in Fort Lee, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm lucky to eat an Italian-style Feast of the Seven Fishes maybe once a year.

But since I gave up meat and poultry more than five years ago, I usually enjoy a variety of fresh, heart-healthy seafood every week -- fresh, dried or from cans.

If you're concerned about mercury, concentrate on such small fish as sardines and anchovies, which are easy to incorporate into pasta sauce, and avoid large predators, including Chilean sea bass and giant bluefin tuna.

A fish salad with canned light skipjack tuna, pink salmon, sardines and chickpeas -- dressed with fresh lime juice, Dijon mustard, cumin and other spices -- makes a great snack or sandwich.

Most of the ingredients can be found at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro.

Whiting and Alaskan pollack, two cousins of cod, are widely available fresh or prepared at Korean supermarkets.

Pollack also is used in fish sticks and other items at Costco Wholesale.

If you prefer fresh fish, the Teterboro Costco usually offers fillets of cod, haddock and flounder, all wild; as well as wild whole red snapper or farmed branzino from Greece.

Costco also carries antibiotic-free Atlantic salmon fillets.

You can find wild-caught Gulf Shrimp at Whole Foods Market in Paramus ($14.99 a pound when on sale), and sometimes at H Mart.

Unlike Fairway Market in Paramus, the fish-counter workers at Whole Foods will gladly devein large wild shrimp.

A refrigerated case displays sashimi, fish eggs and other raw items opposite the main fish counter at the Korean supermarket in the Linwood Plaza shopping center on Fletcher Avenue in Fort Lee.

A tray of sliced raw salmon and other fish was $21.99.

You can't beat two eggs over easy, broiled whiting and terrific home fries at the Golden Grill, 1379 Queen Anne Road, Teaneck (a bargain at $7 with toast), and don't forget to accent your breakfast with Cholula Hot Sauce from Mexico, below.

Whole fresh whiting from the Fort Lee H Mart ($4.99 a pound), seasoned and pan-fried at home, go well with organic quinoa, organic diced tomatoes and garlic cloves; and sauteed cabbage and sweet peppers.

A center spine makes whole whiting and bigger whole King Whiting easy to eat.

A large Futomaki Roll from Maguro Sushi House, 430 Rochelle Ave., Rochelle Park, includes crab, egg, kanpyo (dried shavings of calabash, a gourd), spinach, cucumber and caviar. Also available in the cafe at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, 350 Engle St. (about $8.60).

Slices of Wild Alaskan Smoked Sockeye Salmon, available year-round at Costco Wholesale, can turn a salad into dinner. The smoked salmon also is terrific in an omelet or as a snack when rolled with a slice of reduced-fat Swiss cheese and dipped in Dijon mustard.

Fillet of cod with roasted peppers was the centerpiece of a restaurant-quality takeout dinner from Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood, below. I plated the fish with a wedge of vegetable frittata and broccoli, leaving chicken dumplings and farfalle a la vodka for another family member.

A complete Meal To Go is $7.99 or $5.99 after 4 p.m., if there are any left.

A fresh fava bean salad from another Meal To Go, and pitted olives from Jerry's in Englewood. A 20-ounce container of olives was only $3.99.

Salted codfish or pollack is a staple at our house, and is especially good added to pasta sauce. Here, salted cod, boiled three times and rinsed to cut the sodium content, is paired with fresh ackee, the national fruit of Jamaica, and plated with leftovers. The dish, Ackee and Saltfish, is prepared with sweet and hot peppers, and usually served with boiled green bananas. 

Starbucks Coffee, Chipotle Mexican Grill and H Mart -- all in one stop

Three trays of takeout from H Mart and an Edamame Hummus Wrap from Starbucks Coffee, top left. You'll find the Korean supermarket and the busy Starbucks in Fort Lee's Linwood Plaza shopping center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee's biggest and busiest shopping center, offers an array of eat-in and take-out food, ranging from kimbap to sushi to burritos.

The large Fletcher Avenue strip mall is especially busy at lunchtime, when you can pick up Korean lunch boxes or stop for a meal or takeout at Starbucks Coffee, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Linwood Pizza or Hachi Sushi.

Last Monday, I used my Starbucks Card rewards to pick up a free light lunch, the Edadame Hummus Wrap ($5.95).

Zucchini, bell peppers, spinach and a garlic-herb cheese spread are rolled up in a spinach tortilla, with a roasted tomato sauce and sesame-flax crackers on the side.

When eaten, the sections of the tortilla wrap were both creamy and crunchy. The roasted tomato sauce complemented the wrap, but was a bit too salty.

At H Mart, I picked up trays of Kimbap, Japchae and Dried Persimmon.

Kimbap is an addictive roll of rice, egg, shredded vegetables and imitation crab (made from a wild-caught fish), all wrapped in seaweed ($6.79).

The roll comes with Korean pickles and sliced jalapeno peppers with seeds, which are really hot.

Japchae are yam-flour noodles stir fried with vegetables, best served hot ($5.99). 

Dried Persimmon are intensely sweet ($5.99 a pound), and like all dried fruit delicious when eaten with a crumbly Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese.

The Korean supermarket also has a coffee bar with tables and chairs where you can eat a lunch box or other prepared food.

Linwood Plaza, Fletcher and Linwood avenues, Fort Lee. 

Korean supermarket widens its appeal

Image by wallyg via Flickr

The Super H Mart in Ridgefield is the furthest from my home in Hackensack.

The H Mart in Fort Lee is the newest addition to a small chain of Korean supermarkets in North Jersey and, though it's not the closest to my home, it is becoming a favorite place to shop. 

Today, I picked up a box of 14 champagne mangoes from Mexico for $9.99 -- a better buy than the six I bought a week ago for $6.99 at Costco in Hackensack.

Fresh, wild-caught fluke was among more than a dozen kinds of whole fish fanned out on ice, including Spanish mackerel, pompano, red snapper and orata.

I couldn't resist the fluke's low price of $2.99 a pound, and I had my two-and-a-half-pound fish cut into steaks, which I'll cook with sake and other Asian flavors for dinner tonight.

Image by Sifu Renka via Flickr

Fluke is a flat fish that is also favored by sashimi lovers, and it provides welcome relief from the waves of artificially colored farmed salmon and high-mercury tuna served at sushi bars.

I met a Japanese woman who also was buying fluke, and she said her relatives back home were safe after the earthquake and tsunami.

To go with the fish, I bought stir-fried, translucent yam noodles called japchae ($4.49 for 16 ounces) and kimbap, a vegetable, fish and seaweed roll ($4.99 for 22 ounces).

A pound of Jinga-brand  firm tofu was 88 cents. 

The store also was selling fresh mozzarella for $5.99 a pound -- an item intended to lure American shoppers as well as first- and second-generation Koreans whose tastes go beyond their traditional diet.

Image via CrunchBase

I get coupons

Chipotle Mexican Grill sent me two gift cards, each of which will get me a free burrito and other food.

I had e-mailed the company with "reviews" from the yelp! site, most of which were critical and none of which acknowledged it is one of the few fast-food restaurants that serves antibiotic-free poultry, hormone-free beef and pork, and organic vegetables.

I also sent the company a post from this blog describing my own experience.

I also received coupons from Stonyfield Farms after I e-mailed the company about separation of solids and liquid in organic yogurt I bought at Costco.

Costco almonds, dry espresso beans and more

Image via Wikipedia

Shelled, left, and unshelled almonds.

Costco has improved the package for its Marcona almonds from Spain. These blanched, shelled almonds are seasoned with sea salt, and cost $7.69 for just over a pound of nuts (500 grams) in a plastic bottle with a screw top.

The old container was a canister with a loose-fitting plastic top. Costco also sells roasted, unshelled California almonds with sea salt, but I don't have the price.

Earthbound Farm's restaurant-quality, organic spring mix, which I buy at Costco in Hackensack,  seemed to be rotting before its expiration date, but in the last three or four weeks, I haven't had that problem.

I look carefully at the salad in its clear-plastic tub, to make sure it looks dry. If there is a more delicious salad mix, I haven't found it. It cost only $4.49 a pound, and it's pre-washed, so you can just grab some and put it on a plate or into a sandwich. 

Lately, I have been trying to cut down on bread, so I've been enjoying this salad for breakfast with smoked wild salmon, reduced fat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes in oil from Costco.

Espresso-bean dilemma

My built-in Bosch coffee machine seems unable to handle oily coffee beans, which get hung up in the chute of the grinder, prompting an "add beans" message and necessitating my sliding out the chassis and "stirring" the beans with my fingers.

I found some non-oily beans from Brazil at Fairway Market in Paramus and others from amazon.com. The 2.2 pounds of Lavazza Super Crema espresso beans cost less than $7 a pound, with discounts and free shipping, if you agree to have them sent to you periodically.

I'm trying the Lavazza beans from Italy first.

Black figs and tofu

I picked up two dozen black figs from California for $6.99 at H Mart in Fort Lee on Wednesday, as well as a new prepared-food item -- sweet-and-sour tofu balls with red pepper ($4.99).

I tried the tofu balls at room temperature, but I like them better after heating them in the microwave for about a minute and a half. The microwave also lends a new dimension to small blocks of stewed tofu with scallion and red pepper ($3.49).

For dinner Wednesday night, I cooked three small, wild-caught croakers ($1.99 a pound) on my stove-top grill, and ate them with a salad. What a mess.

You can always find dinner at H Mart

Image via Wikipedia

I walked into the H Mart in Fort Lee this afternoon with no idea of what was for dinner, and I walked out with fresh, wild-caught fish and a couple of Korean appetizers.


All I need to do for dinner is to cook my trio of whole porgy in bottled Mexican green or red sauce, boil rice in my electric cooker and make a salad. Stewed Alaskan pollock and tofu in red-pepper sauce would make good appetizers.

I could also steam the fish with sake, sesame oil, soy and fish sauces.


The fresh porgy were $3.95 ($1.49 a pound, usually $2.99), and I asked the fish monger to clean them and leave on the heads and tails. The tofu was $3.49 and the prepared pollock was $5.99.

I also bought three pounds of organic, Granny Smith apples for $3.99. A pound of Campari, herbicide-free tomatoes were $1.99.

The fish were displayed on plenty of ice among maybe 20 different selections. Three men were working behind the counter, cleaning fish for customers. 


This is a meal I can prepare in about 30 minutes. 

I also noticed that this H Mart carries Coleman organic chicken and another brand of antibiotic-free chicken, but I don't think it sells naturally raised beef.


H Mart, 112-130 Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee; 201-947-7800.