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. 

If you're a dieter, this snack bar from Costco can help you skip lunch

The old and new boxes for Nature's Bakery Fig Bar from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack. There are six more twin packs in the larger box, but those who love figs don't welcome another change.

Editor's note: A favorite snack from Costco Wholesale now comes in a bigger box at a lower price per bar. Today, I also discuss other ingredients from Costco and other sources we can't live without.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Dieters like me who try to skip lunch to maintain their weight loss rely on snack bars and coffee to get them to dinner.

I usually eat a big, homemade breakfast, then snack on reduced-fat cheese or a twin pack of Nature's Bakery Fig Bar -- two 1-ounce bars that wrap fig paste and other flavors in stone-ground whole wheat.

Think of them as Fig Newtons for adults who want to avoid high-fructose corn syrup and other genetically modified ingredients. 

Nature's Bakery Fig Bars are non-GMO, kosher and dairy free.

I love figs -- fresh, dried or in an anise-flavored marmalade from Lebanon (sold at Fattal's in Paterson) -- so I took to these bars immediately.

They are the best snack bar Costco Wholesale carries and I have to hide them from my son, a teenager.

The two bars in each pack have a total of 220 calories, but they have no saturated fat or cholesterol. Each bar has 8 grams of dietary fiber.

Growing box

I first encountered them at the Hackensack Costco in November 2013, when a 3-pound box with 24 twin packs was $8.59 -- about 36 cents each.

I'm not sure I noticed when the box got bigger and held 30 twin packs.

This week, my wife brought home an even bigger box of the same fig bar with 36 twin packs for $10.79 or only 30 cents each.

But another, unwelcome change is that the unflavored fig bar is gone. 

Apple Cinnamon-flavored fig paste replaced it. Other flavors are Blueberry and Raspberry.

Costco's Kirkland Signature Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese from Italy (shredded) melted during the reheating of this vegetarian lentil soup from the cafe at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. I added Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto, a refrigerated product, before serving the soup. Don't forget a glass of red wine.

I made a 10-inch omelet with Kirkland Signature Egg Whites, reduced-fat Swiss cheese, fresh spinach and Mateo's Gourmet Salsa from Costco, and ate it for breakfast with leftover organic whole-wheat spaghetti my wife made with three cans of Moroccan sardines in tomato sauce, sweet peppers, fresh tomato, onion and extra-virgin olive oil, but no pasta sauce.

Other great products

Two Costco products I miss when the wholesale store sells out are Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto, a refrigerated product that uses basil from Italy ($7.99); and shredded Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese.

We bought two 1-pound jars of the aged cheese from Italy when they were on sale for $8.49. 

Normally, a jar costs $11.49 or about a buck more per pound than the same cheese in wedges Costco also sells.

We use the shredded cheese in soups, as well as in egg and pasta dishes, and slices from a wedge are great with fresh or dried fruit and nuts.

Another great item is Wholly Guacaole, now organic. Three 16-ounce "peel-and-serve trays" were $12.99 at Costco this week.

The company says it uses 15 hand-scooped Hass avocados to produce the 3-pound package.

To put that in perspective, you can pay $14 for guacamole made at your table with a single avocado at Rosa Mexicano Restaurant, a couple of miles from the Hackensack Costco.

Dandelion Tea

One of the teas we buy from Amazon.com is Organic Roasted Dandelion Root, a caffeine-free herbal tea made from "sustainably harvested [roots] from the wild meadows of Poland."

Six 16-count boxes are $17.61 under Amazon's Subscribe & Save program, which sends us an order every five months.

Other teas we get under the same program are Stash Moroccan Green Tea (120 bags for $15.57) and Newman's Own Organics Royal Tea, a black tea that never turns bitter, no matter how long you steep the bag (500 bags for $17.95).

Whole-wheat pasta

Organic whole-wheat pastas you can cook al dente without leaving a card-boardy feel in your mouth are commonplace, allowing me to completely give up conventional pasta.

Whole-wheat pastas, organic and non-organic, have more fiber and fewer carbohydrates than their conventional cousins.

ShopRite, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market all stock organic whole-wheat pasta in a variety of shapes.

ShopRite has the best prices for an import, $1.25 a pound for Luigi Vitelli-brand Spaghetti, Linguine, Capellini, Fusilli and Penne.

Vitelli Foods is based in Englewood.

I prepare whole-wheat pasta at home every week, because I'd be lucky to find an Italian-American restaurant in North Jersey that serves anything but whole-wheat penne.

Mouth-filling Garofalo Whole Wheat Pappardelle from Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood dressed with Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto, pignoli nuts and shredded Kirkland Signature Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese. I also prepared a side dish of organic baby spinach with ingredients from Costco. The broad, flat noodles take a few minutes longer to reach al dente than the 8 minutes listed on the bag.

Cooking with organic eggs, pesto and Mixed 7 Grains

Three organic eggs from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack fried sunny side up with shaved Parmigiano Reggiano, also from Costco, and Aleppo pepper. I served them with leftover Chinese broccoli and Mixed 7 Grains, a yummy Korean blend of brown rices and beans that requires at least three hours of soaking.

Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco dressing fat, mouth-filling ribbons of Garofalo Whole Wheat Pappardelle from Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood. The refrigerated pesto requires no heating, but I return the drained pasta to the warm pot, add the pesto and mix them with a fork and spoon. The Italian pasta takes several minutes longer to cook al dente than what is listed on the package. I drank a red wine from Sicily with my meal and finished with a simply dressed salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix.

For a sweet, savory and spicy breakfast, I plated and reheated smoky mashed skin-on sweet potatoes; a frittata wedge with chopped garlic, cheese and Mexican green salsa, and store-bought Korean stewed tofu. The sweet potatoes were seasoned with Kirkland Signature Sweet Mesquite Seasoning, which has spices, sea salt, sugar and "natural mesquite smoke flavoring." 

A few ounces of bottled Mexican green salsa, available in supermarkets and at Trader Joe's, went into the egg mixture and was spooned over the top of the frittata after it was removed from the oven. 

For breakfast today, I plated and reheated more sweet potatoes, sauteed baby spinach, store-bought Korean stewed pollock, top left, and mackerel with ackee, a Jamaican fruit, all leftovers.

During cooking, I grabbed for the Kirkland Signature Crushed Red Pepper, right, but added Sweet Mesquite Seasoning instead, giving mashed sweet potatoes and Chinese broccoli a pleasant, smoky taste. The first ingredient listed on the label of the Sweet Mesquite Seasoning is sea salt; a little goes a long way.

Shopper's fantasy: One food store that has it all

Wines from all over the world are sold in the liquor department of Costco Wholesale in Wayne, where you can buy bottles carrying the house label, Kirkland Signature, including a complex 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon for only $7.99 (1.5 liter) or less than $4 a bottle.

At home, I am pouring four wines for dinner on a rotating basis, including Costco's Cabernet, right, and two wines from Spain with screw tops, center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

I drove a 40-mile loop today in search of a bottle of wine, and to re-stock my cupboard with Aleppo red pepper and inexpensive Moroccan sardines.

Wouldn't it be great if there was one store that carried all my favorites at the right price?

As it is, I stopped at three today:

ShopRite in Paramus for the store brand of 1% lactose-free milk; Costco Wholesale in Wayne, searching for a California wine, Kirkland Signature Old Vine Zinfandel; and Fattal's in Paterson, my source for crushed red pepper and sardines.

Metrokane-brand Rabbit Wine Bottle Stoppers provide an air-tight seal, allowing me to keep four opened bottles of red wine on the counter at one time. I found these on Amazon.con for about $7.50.

Crushed Aleppo red pepper is mildly spicy and a terrific garnish for eggs, above; fish and other dishes. I keep a container in my refrigerator, just a step or two from the stove.

Costco in Wayne

My Costco in Hackensack doesn't have a liquor department, only a liquor store that is not affiliated with the warehouse store and doesn't carry wine with a Kirkland Signature label.  

So, I drove to the Wayne Costco (about 20 miles from my home), where on an earlier visit, I picked up terrific bottles of Kirkland Signature Champagne from France and California Cabernet Sauvignon.

Today, I was in search of Kirkland Signature Old Vine Zinfandel from Sonoma County, California, that I read about in the February 2014 Costco Connection magazine.

But I couldn't find it among the hundreds of bottles of wine, and an employee couldn't help, either.

I cut my losses by picking up another 1.5-liter bottle of Kirkland Signature Cabernet for $7.99; Kirkland Signature Body Soap and Kirkland Signature Body Wash.

I also purchased a 30-roll package of Charmin toilet paper ($19.59 with $2 off), which carries an unforgettable slogan: "We all go. Why not enjoy the go?"

I hope this "ultra soft and absorbent" toilet tissue will help me forget the Scott toilet paper I bought at Costco that was so thin and narrow it looked as if it was used in prisons and mental wards.

Costco Wholesale, 77 Willowbrook Blvd., Wayne; 1-973-812-8661.

Fattal's

At Fattal's, I picked up two dozen cans of Al Shark Moroccan Sardines in Tomato Sauce, the variety that has the least sodium (99 cents each).

I will use two cans tonight to prepare 1 pound of organic whole wheat shells with garlic, vegetables and sardines.

I also bought two 1-liter bottles of Al Shark Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Syria for $4.99 each, one of the few sold at Fattal's with a label that shows the country of origin.

Aleppo red pepper was $6.99 a pound.

Fattal's includes a grocery with cheese and other dairy products, butcher, cafe, bread, prepared food and a jewelry store. 

Fattal's, 975-77 Main St., Paterson; 1-973-742-7125. Open 7 days. Free parking in lot.

"Living" basil reminds me of opening a bottle of red wine to let it "breathe." This sign was in the Paramus ShopRite's produce department this morning. Half-gallons of ShopRite lactose-free milk were $3.49 each; last week, they were on sale.

H Mart

My wife prefers shopping at the H Mart in Englewood, but that Korean supermarket doesn't always have sales that rival another H Mart, the one in Little Ferry.

On Tuesday, when we ran out of Kokuho Yellow Label White Rice from California, she asked me to go to Little Ferry, where I found 15-pound bags on sale for $8.99 or $6 off.

I saw a sign that warned of higher prices caused by the drought in California, and bought two bags.

I also picked up a 16-pack of Shin Ramyun, a spicy instant soup, for $9.99 or $7 off.

H Mart, 260 Bergen Turnpike, Little Ferry; 1-201-814-0400. Open 7 days.

This morning, I made a fresh-tomato-and-cheese frittata with Kirkland Signature Egg Whites from Costco, several kinds of reduced-fat and full-fat cheeses, pesto from Trader Joe's and Costco; and za'atar, a Middle Eastern thyme mixture available at Fattal's in Paterson.

Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's in Paramus is one of the few places I can find antibiotic- and preservative-free bacon and hot dogs for the meat eaters in the family ($4.99 and $4.49, respectively).

The store also carries terrific 100% juices in 64-ounce bottles, such as Garden Patch and Green Plant ($3.49 and $3.99, respectively).

Last Friday, I also picked up grass-fed Angus Beef strip loin steaks from New Zealand (frozen for $10.99 a pound).

But I didn't care for another item, Trader Joe's Organic Oats & Flax Instant Oatmeal (8 servings for $3.49), a sweetened product that wasn't very good made with 2/3 cup of water.

I'll try it again with 1/2 cup of low-fat milk.

Trader Joe's, 404 Route 17 north, Paramus; 201-265-9624. Open daily 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Jerry's

What do you do when Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood runs out of those wonderful restaurant-quality dinners available for takeout ($7.99 or $5.99 after 4 p.m.)?

On Wednesday afternoon, I couldn't find any Meals To Go when I stopped in at around 4:15 p.m., and comforted myself with several cheese samples.

I bought Jerry's Homemade Meat Lasagna ($6.99 a pound) and Jerry's Homemade Small Crabcakes (6 for $4.99), and my family demolished them.

For my dinner, I made baby spinach with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes, fried two organic brown eggs from Costco and ate them with leftover organic brown rice and red kidney beans.

Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood; 201-871-7108.

Food memories are some of the strongest

At La Pola, Joe Rico makes Cuban sandwiches and finishes them in a heated press. For me, he made a sandwich with the smoked wild salmon I brought him, below. The other ingredients were sliced pickle, Swiss cheese, mustard and garlic sauce.

The press (la plancha) flattens the Cuban water bread and makes the crust crispy.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss strong food memories, the lack of an express line at Costco Wholesale, the Can Can Sale at ShopRite, pasta and eggs, and bread made with and without butter.

My friend Luis, who is in his 80s, was born in Cuba.

After a few spoonfuls of soup and conversation with other Cubans at La Pola in West New York, he recalled helping neighbors on the island hand turn a spit to roast a whole pig for Christmas many decades ago.

But as we left the Cuban sandwich shop this past Thursday, he couldn't remember where he had parked his car.

A nearby market promises the fish it sells were "sleeping in the sea" last night.

For Luis, it took only a little Caldo Gallego to bring back memories of Cuba. La Pola is a center of Cuban food culture, where machine-gun Spanish echoes off the tile walls.

As much else fades into the foggy past, Luis' memories of wood-fired roast pork and other Cuban dishes remain vivid.

One of his first jobs in the United States was as a short-order cook in a Route 4 diner in Paramus. 

Today, at home, he cooks picadillo, tostones and other Cuban food with the assurance of a kitchen veteran.

On Thursday, Luis struck up a conversation with the man at the next table who had ordered La Pola's palomilla steak special with french fries.

The Hoboken man said he was born in Cuba in 1925, and had worked in a shoe factory, making orthopedic and other types of footwear.

Luis' father owned a shoe factory, but it wasn't the one the man worked in.

He showed us a large, heavy Cuban 1 peso coin from 1934 that he uses as a key fob, and said it is plated in silver. 

Meyer Lemons, above, and wild-caught Pacific cod fillets, below right, were two of the three items I picked up at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack last Tuesday.

No mercy at Costco

As I returned to my car with fresh fish, bananas and Meyer Lemons I had just purchased at Costco Wholesale, I saw a woman walking in my direction with sleeping pillows and a large plastic bottle of honey.

She walked to the SUV parked next to my car, laughed and said no other shopper would let her check out first. 

I know the feeling. 

There are no express lines at my Hackensack warehouse store, and shoppers run the gamut from people who stop in for two or three items to members who are stocking small delis and convenience stores.

I had only three items, but still had to wait behind members with overflowing carts who had bought everything in sight. 

A 4-pound container of Meyer Lemons for $7.39 worked out to about $1.85 a pound.

The unusual fruit is a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, and a thin skin makes them easy to squeeze. But they contain a lot of pits.

My wife used most of them to make homemade lemonade. 

I served the cod with Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Spaghetti with sardines, above, and spinach from Costco I blanched in hot water and sauteed briefly in a wok, below.

 

No meal is complete without a bowl of pre-washed Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, dressed simply with extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I squeezed one Meyer Lemon over the fresh cod fillets before coating the fish in a spice mixture and roasting the fillets in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. 

The wild-caught cod was $6.99 a pound, only $1 more than farmed tilapia from Central America.

I squeezed another Meyer Lemon into a glass with ice before pouring in Adirondack Seltzer, my favorite dinner beverage after wine.
 

The ShopRite in Hackensack has an olive bar priced at $6.99 a pound, above, or $3 more per pound than the Italian olives from Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood, below.

This dance is no bargain

I took a second swipe on Saturday at the 2013 Can Can Sale! -- this time at the ShopRite in Hackensack --  but the only exclamations I heard were from shoppers complaining about smaller discounts than in the past.

A dozen or more 50-cent and $1-off coupons from the newspaper helped, when multiplied, to cut prices on two items to at or below what they were at last year's Can Can promotion.

I bought Dial for Men body wash at $2.49 each, a can of Progresso Light beef soup for 85 cents and a 19-ounce spray can of Lysol Disinfectant for $2.25.

Can Can items included 5 20-ounce Ziploc plastic storage containers -- now BPA free -- for $2.49 or $1.30 0ff. 

I had eggs with Aleppo pepper over leftover spaghetti and sardines for breakfast, and again for dinner, below, with grated cheese and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

 


Pasta and eggs 

The perfect companion for Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Spaghetti are one or two Costco organic brown eggs fried sunny side up.

The taste of the yolk broken over the pasta is incomparable. Now, this is comfort food. 
 

 

At Balthazar Bakery in Englewood, a baker, right, uses his hands to measure and weigh butter for croissants. He is said to have the softest hands at the bakery.

More baguettes

I returned to Balthazar Bakery in Englewood on Wednesday to pick up two more baguettes ($2 each), and saw a baker working with a huge mound of butter that would go into those flaky croissants.

It didn't tempt me. I long ago banned butter from my diet, and bread from breakfast, lunch and dinner.

When I got home, I cut off the heel of one of the crusty baguettes, which contain no butter, and ate it, enjoying the wonderful crunch and distinctive taste.

I sliced the rest into sandwich-size portions, and put them in the freezer for other members of the family.