Enjoying homemade pesto, pan-fried fish, pasta with sardines and more

Homemade pesto -- basil from my garden, garlic, grated cheese, pine nuts, salt and extra-virgin olive oil -- is a savory accent on a wedge of sweet-potato frittata.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Fragrant basil leaves growing abundantly in my garden are just a distance memory, but I still have one decent portion of homemade pesto in the freezer.

Although pesto is most commonly used as a dressing for pasta, it's versatile enough to spread on a sandwich or to accent a fish fillet just off the grill.

I also use it in omelets and on frittatas. 

Until Costco Wholesale unveiled Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto in 2013, I always made my own pesto in large batches using a blender recipe that could be frozen before the addition of grated cheese.

You'll find the recipe here: 

How to enjoy pesto without pasta

Now that my plants stand withered from the summer heat, I'll return to enjoying Costco's refrigerated pesto, which uses basil leaves from Italy.

Season one carton or 16 ounces of liquid egg whites mixed with grated cheese before adding the mixture to a 10-inch preheated pan with olive oil. As the crust sets, you can add sweet potato slices, boiled separately until you can pierce them with a fork. Then, move the non-stick pan into the broiler until the crust browns (about 15 minutes at a low broiler setting).

Pesto, which requires no heating, can be added to a frittata after it is removed from the oven. I also added crushed Aleppo pepper.

I used homemade pesto and organic pignoli nuts to dress an 8.8-ounce package of Delverde-brand Tagliatelle Nests with Spinach from Italy. These mouth-filling noodles take only about 5 minutes to reach al-dente perfection. I use unsalted water because there is plenty of sodium in homemade or Costco pesto.

A 10-inch egg-white omelet can be stuffed with Costco's smoked wild salmon, pesto and Mexican-style salsa, all sold under the Kirkland Signature house label. I made this omelet with my own pesto.

I had my omelet for breakfast with a baked sweet potato and grilled Chinese eggplant.

I thought I had found a good buy on wild-caught Gulf Shrimp at H Mart, 260 Bergen Turnpike in Little Ferry, above and below, but when I turned over the bag, the ingredients included salt and sodium bisulfite, a preservative. I passed.

An unusual item at the Little Ferry H Mart is jackfruit, sold in large pieces for around $5 to $6. If you buy one, make sure you refrigerate it when you get home.

I rely on the Korean supermarket for fresh whole fish at low prices, such as this porgy my wife seasoned and pan fried in olive oil ($2.99 a pound). Three porgies came in under $10. I also picked up baby mustard greens, which were on sale for 78 cents a pound.

Luigi Vitelli-brand Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti from ShopRite in Paramus dressed in Victoria Marinara, Moroccan sardines and fresh cherry tomatoes. I added a little extra-virgin olive oil and a few ounces of red wine to the sauce, plus dried Italian herbs and red-pepper flakes.

A heart-healthy dinner for four with leftovers: A 1-pound box of whole-wheat pasta, a 40-ounce jar of marinara and three or four cans of sardines, mashed with a fork before you add them to the sauce. I left a few ounces of sauce in the bottle and used them to poach two organic eggs for breakfast the next day.

Leftover whole-wheat pasta is a great bread substitute at breakfast.

Dozens of free samples, including the full-fat cheeses I rarely buy, are available at Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St. in Englewood, above and below.

I had a hard time resisting marinated cherry size fresh mozzarella, left, and sampled three with a toothpick.

On Friday, I hit the jackpot with one of Jerry's restaurant-quality take-out dinners made with a soft-shell crab. The complete dinner included string beans, pasta, a stuffed mushroom and a cucumber salad, marked down to $5.99 after 4 p.m.

Other Meals To Go were built around a grouper fillet, chicken picata or sausage. 

At ShopRite, 224 Route 4 east at Forest Avenue in Paramus, the store-brand of Greek Non-fat Yogurt with Fruit was on sale this week (75 cents each), and seemed a better buy than other brands, including Oikos, Chobani and Fage. At home, I opened one of the ShopRite cups, below, but found it wasn't full. The cup holds 8 ounces, but contains only 5.3 ounces of thick yogurt and fruit, the net weight listed on the side.

Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice carries a badge from the Non-GMO Project, telling consumers the oranges weren't grown using genetically modified seed. 

At the Costco Wholesale Business Center, 80 South River St. in Hackensack, a 2-pound bag of triple-washed kale was $3.89 on Thursday. A week earlier, I saw the same bag of kale being sold at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro for $5.39 -- a dramatic example of how prices can vary at the two warehouses.

At Costco, plenty of wild salmon plus lower prices on almonds, quinoa

Fresh wild sockeye salmon from Costco Wholesale in Teterboro ($9.99 a pound), grilled on the stove-top and accented with homemade basil pesto, torn basil and ground Aleppo pepper.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The fresh wild salmon is running once again at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro.

I found a small refrigerated case filled with many packages of skin-on salmon fillets last Tuesday, and they were priced at a friendly $9.99 a pound.

That contrasts with shortages of fresh wild sockeye in June.

Easy grilling

Six serving portions of wild salmon needed only 7 minutes on a stove-top grill over medium-high heat (4 minutes on the skin side, then flip them for 3 minutes).

I seasoned the fish with Himalayan Pink Salt from Costco and fresh lime juice before grilling, and accented then with homemade basil pesto and torn leaves from plants in my garden. 

Six portions of fresh wild sockeye salmon cost about $17, enough to feed four with leftovers.

Kirkland Signature Almonds come in a new 3-pound bag and at a lower price, below. The raw, sodium-free almonds make a great snack after I roast them at 275 degrees for 1 hour and 20 minutes, then dust them with Ground Saigon Cinnamon, also sold at Costco.

Once sold in a 4-pound bag under the Nature's Intent label, Organic Quinoa now comes in a larger, 4.5-pound bag with a Kirkland Signature label, at a new, lower price, below, even without an instant rebate.

Nature's Intent Organic Quinoa -- prepared in an electric cooker with whole peeled garlic cloves, organic diced tomatoes, olive oil and salt -- is a great side dish with wild salmon and a stuffed egg-white omelet. With fewer carbs than rice or pasta, quinoa also is a good bread substitute.

Costco Wholesale seems to be the only store that doesn't offer organic whole wheat pasta from Italy. I've purchased various shapes at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market and ShopRite. Now, the Teterboro warehouse is offering Organic Chickpea Fusilli Pasta with the color of the whole wheat product, but at more than three times the price per pound, below.

Made in Nature Organic Pitted Dates, above, and Organic Smyrna Figs, below, are unsulfured, meaning they are free of a preservative, and have no added sugar. They taste great with those almonds from Costco.

Himalayan Pink Salt, once available only in a Kirkland Signature grinder, now comes in a 5-pound container that is ready to use in salt shakers, below. It claims to be the purest salt in the world.

These sweet peppers from Canada were labeled non-GMO.

Fresh Peeled Garlic from Miami-based Garland Food appears to have replaced the peeled California Garlic sold under the Christopher Ranch label. Last week was the first time we found a 3-pound bag of Garland garlic that didn't appear to have any dark-colored, soft cloves ($7.29). The label says the garlic comes from Argentina.

Now, Costco members can use Visa credit or debt cards at the food court in Teterboro. A large cup of Kirkland Signature Nonfat Vanilla Yogurt was $1.35.