Whole Foods: 10 ways to think outside of bottled pasta sauce

Whole Foods Market suggests poaching two eggs in bottled pasta sauce. I served them over leftover organic quinoa for breakfast, and found using a soup spoon the easiest way to eat the comforting dish.

Instead of grated cheese, I used a vegetable peeler to add shaved Grana Padano from Costco Wholesale. I also used a little extra-virgin olive oil and Italian dried herbs, in addition to the black pepper recommended by Whole Foods.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I stopped at Whole Foods Market in Paramus to pick up naturally raised oxtails for the meat eaters in the family, and grabbed a copy of "The Whole Deal," a store publication with coupons, recipes and other advice.

As I was leafing through it at home, I got a kick out of "10 things to do with pasta sauce (beyond pasta)."

I have lots of bottled sauce around -- 40-ounce bruisers from Victoria and Paesana -- and smaller jars from The Silver Palate and ShopRite.

So on Saturday morning, I tried the first non-pasta suggestion -- Eggs in Purgatory.

I simmered 1 cup of Silver Palate Tomato Basil sauce and a little olive oil in a small pan, cracked open two organic eggs and topped them with shaved Grana Padano Cheese, black pepper and dried Italian herbs.

I found a glass cover for the pan that helped cut the cooking time.

One cup of pasta sauce for two eggs seemed like a lot, but I used an 8-inch, non-stick pan and followed the recipe.

On Saturday morning, I used The Silver Palate Tomato Basil sauce.

Chili, Spanish rice

The next two suggestions are chili -- just add beans and chili powder to pasta sauce -- and Spanish rice.

For the rice dish, Whole Foods suggests cooking 1 cup of rice and substituting 1 cup of pasta sauce for 1 cup of water.

Then, you stir in capers, green olives and chopped green onions.

I might try this with 2 or 3 cups of organic brown rice. I have capers, pitted black olives and scallions in the refrigerator. 

Fish in pasta sauce

Another suggestion I like is poaching fish fillets in pasta sauce, a variation on my own recipe of poaching cod, haddock or wild salmon in Mexican green salsa with added fresh lime juice.

On Thursday, I bought a 24-ounce jar of Whole Foods Roasted Salsa Verde for $3.99, and a 16-ounce jar of Roasted Chipotle Salsa for $2.69.

Both are free of the MSG that is now being added to a onetime favorite, La Costena Mexican Green Salsa.

The frozen Coleman Oxtails were $7.99 a pound, and each of the two packages I bought weighed more than 2 pounds.

No-recipe home cooking in photos

Breakfast salad: Organic spring mix with beefsteak tomato, za'atar thyme mixture, and reduced fat cheese; cabbage kimchi, olives and canned-fish salad (yellowfin tuna, pink salmon and sardines).

Small mustard greens with a bottle of Mexican green salsa.

Mustard greens plated with half of a mahi-mahi fillet cooked in spicy green salsa or salsa verde and a sweet potato made in 6 minutes in a microwave (speed-cook setting).

An egg-white omelet with reduced-fat cheese, white anchovies and coarsely ground Aleppo pepper plated with leftover sugar pea shoots.

Fresh greens


I cook greens, fresh broccoli and French green beans the same way, and they are ready in under 5 minutes.


First, cut and wash your greens, then blanch in a covered pot with boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes.


Using the cover, drain the pot and put it back on the stove with no flame under it.


You can drizzle the greens with extra-virgin olive oil, sprinkle on a little salt and add seasonings such as powdered garlic and black pepper.


Or, you can add a little soy sauce and sesame oil, and no-salt organic seasoning. You're done.


Fish in green sauce


Pour half of a bottle of spicy Mexican salsa verde into a large, non-stick pot and warm it up. Add any kind of wild-caught fish fillets, including frozen mahi-mahi or Alaskan salmon.


Pour the rest of the sauce over the fish and squeeze the juice of one or two limes into the pot. Cover and cook for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on whether the fish is fresh of frozen.


You also can cook a whole fish this way. Slash each side in three places with a sharp knife to help you judge when the fish is done.


You can serve fish in green sauce with a sweet potato, organic brown rice with lentils, made in an electric rice cooker; or whole-wheat pasta with bottled sauce.


I reserve the green sauce for use with omelets or eggs fried sunny side up.


Canned fish salad


Empty canned fish and oil or water into a plastic container, add chopped celery or sweet pepper and then flavor with Dijon mustard, fresh lime or lemon juice and powdered cumin to taste.


Cover and refrigerate.


Sources


H Mart or other Asian supermarkets are great sources for a wide variety of fresh greens, including spinach, collard, mustard, bok choy and Chinese broccoli.


Costco Wholesale usually has fresh wild-caught haddock, flounder and Pacific cod, but when it doesn't, I buy frozen mahi-mahi or salmon in the freezer section.


Costco also sells Kirkland Signature Organic No Salt Seasoning, a blend of 21 spices and other ingredients.


ShopRite and Hackensack Market carry Mexican green salsa from Goya and La Costena. A 16-ounce bottle is enough to prepare as much as 2 pounds of fish.

Related article

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Some like it hot

Image by saguayo via Flickr

That quick fish taco, scrambled eggs or just about anything else you're eating benefits from a liberal dose of hot and not-so-hot sauces.


We keep several around, notably salsa taquera (hot) -- a teaspoon or so does nicely on your fish taco (leftover fish, tortilla, salsa taquera and 30 to 45 seconds in the microwave). Goya and La Costena both sell salsa taquera, but I prefer the former.


We had haddock cooked in mild Mexican green sauce (salsa verde) for dinner last night, and I used some of the leftovers to make two fish tacos for breakfast, with salsa taquera. A third tortilla got a slice of muenster cheese and some salsa taquera, and 30 seconds in the microwave melted the cheese -- a quick, simple quesadilla.


One of the hottest sauces we use  is Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (the one with the green cap, made in California). You see this sauce on tables at Vietnamese restaurants, including Saigon R in Englewood, but it's really hot, so using too much can ruin your pho. My 13-year-old son loves this sauce on sandwiches.


My favorite all-around sauce is Valentina salsa picante -- thicker, smokier and not as hot as Tabasco-brand sauce and considerably cheaper (second from right in photo above). I buy Valentina in the 34-ounce bottle and use it liberally on eggs, omelets and Jamaican ackee and saltfish. In a pinch, you can use Valentina on your tacos.


H Mart in Little Ferry and other Korean supermarkets carry a dizzying array of hot pepper paste -- the dipping sauce for barbecue or dumplings. They are both spicy and sweet. I usually select one based on a lower price.


Another alternative to Tabasco is Grace-brand hot pepper sauce from Jamaica, marked "very hot," which uses Scotch bonnet or capsicum peppers. A far milder Grace sauce is Fish & Meat Sauce, made with tomato paste, mango puree, cane sugar and cane vinegar.


Mexican and Jamaican sauces are available at Hackensack Market on Passaic Street. ShoRite also carries some Mexican sauces.

Shopping and tasting notes

Image via Wikipedia

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.