Shopping and tasting notes

Image by Tony the Misfit via Flickr

When you live in Hackensack, as I do, it doesn't make sense to do takeout from Aleppo, my favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in Paterson. But on the way home from Morristown yesterday on Route 80, it was an easy detour to buy our dinner and stock up on Syrian bread, sardines, canned hummus and other items. (Photo: Great Falls in Paterson.)

My first stop was the parking lot in front of Fattal's Bakery on Main Street. I bought 10 cans of sardines (99 cents to $1.09 each); three dozen fresh pocket breads ($1.50 a dozen), canned hummus ($1.09), hot peppers ($2.99 a pound) and homemade spinach-and-cheese pies ($8.99 for six).

At Aleppo, less than two blocks away at Main and Thomas streets, I asked Halla the waitress for a bowl of lentil soup -- a delicious puree scented with cumin and served with small pieces of fried bread and lemon. I also ordered takeout -- fried whiting with rice, the hot pepper dip called muhammara, hummus and fried cheese turnovers.

The fish, oily rice, dips and turnovers made another satisfying, meatless dinner. Tomorrow will mark our third week without chicken, beef, pork or lamb, and I still haven't run out of menu ideas. I've actually dropped a few pounds and can fit into my old jeans again.


Thursday night, we enjoyed Boca-brand soy burgers with cheese on yeasty Balthazar Bakery potato-onion rolls. I made a Syrian-style fingerling potato salad: extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, allspice, coarse Aleppo red pepper and salt to taste, and also served an organic green salad.

I'm not sure where we'll be eating tonight -- our weekly dinner out -- but I have lobster ravioli and corn-and-crab chowder in the freezer for Sunday dinner.

Although we haven't been buying meat, I've noticed ShopRite hasn't put free-range, grass-fed Australian beef on sale for weeks, but continues to discount conventionally raised U.S. beef and chicken.

Beans, beans and bread

Image by seier+seier+seier via Flickr

My passion for the spices and flavors of the Middle East only seem to increase as I get older. I have been trying more and more to experience again the wonderful meals I enjoyed for many years at my mother's table -- her Jewish specialties from Aleppo, Syria, where she was born.

Now, I visit Aleppo Restaurant and Middle Eastern bakeries and markets in Paterson to taste that wonderful food or gather the ingredients for home-cooked meals.

The other day, I found a large, 32-ounce can of fava beans from Lebanon in my cupboard and immediately thought salad. I drained most of the liquid and poured these humble beans into a bowl, adding chopped scallion and parsley, extra-virgin olive oil, juice from two small lemons, garlic powder, cumin, allspice, Aleppo red pepper and salt.

You can heat up the seasoned beans, smash some of them and serve them with a hard-boiled egg on top. Or you can spoon a good amount of beans on a plate, warm them in the microwave and top them with one or two sunny side up eggs, as I did for breakfast today. Then, I warmed up Syrian bread and scooped up egg, yolk and beans, or made small sandwiches with the pocket bread.

Image via Wikipedia

Grace Sasson, my mother, used to make falafel with fresh fava beans, as the Egyptians do. Everyone else uses chickpeas. In her self-published cookbook, "Kosher Syrian Cooking," she has the falafel recipe and a second recipe where shelled fava beans are cooked in oil, water and allspice until they turn brown and served as a side dish.

I'll probably be making some hummus (pureed chickpeas) this week -- adding powdered garlic, lemon juice and olive oil to canned spread from Lebanon -- and I know I'll be snacking on pocket-bread sandwiches of fava beans and hummus. Basic, filling and delicious.

The zing of Aleppo red pepper

Four of us met for a tasty and filling lunch yesterday at Aleppo Restaurant, one of my favorites in the exotic Middle Eastern food bazaar of South Paterson.

We ordered maza -- small plates of dip, fried and raw kibbe, salad and other appetizers -- and used the fresh, chewy pocket bread as our scoop or to fashion sandwiches.

At least a couple of dishes were made with the coarsely ground Aleppo red pepper that has taken the name of Syria's northern capital. I have a couple of cups of it in the freezer and sprinkle it over fried eggs, hummus or rub it into chicken.

At Aleppo Restaurant, the red pepper gives a nice zing to the muhammara, a spicy, Aleppan dip made with bread crumbs, walnuts, olive oil and other ingredients. And I loved it in the small, raw kibbe we were served.

I buy my Aleppo pepper at Fattal's Bakery, where it is sold for about $4 a pound, but don't bother with the bakery's muhammara, which is not as good as the restaurant's (975 Main St., Paterson; 973-742-7125).

When we visited Aleppo Restaurant yesterday, the staff was preparing two whole lambs stuffed with rice for a party of 50. I wish I could have been there.

My family's ties with Paterson's Syrian community were established long before I moved to North Jersey and started shopping there nearly 30 years ago

My Sephardic Jewish mother used to regale me with stories about excursions from Brooklyn to Garret Mountain so her extended family could enjoy a celebration of music and food called hefle (phonetic spelling, pronounced HEF-leh ). One time, my elegantly dressed Uncle Halfon, who always seemed to have a glass of scotch or arak in his hand, was stopped by police for drunken driving and jailed overnight.


Aleppo Restaurant, 939 Main St., Paterson; 973-977-2244. No alcohol permitted.

Fresh pita bread in Hackensack

When I run out of soft, chewy Syrian bread from Fattal's Bakery in Paterson, getting more involves a 16-mile, round-trip drive. The other day, I was running an errand in another part of Hackensack and found fresh bread at Sahara Stores on South Summit Avenue.

Image via Wikipedia

This is a small, Middle Eastern deli and grocery store, with prepared food and shelves of imported goods, and now, fresh pita bread delivered seven days a week, the friendly owner said. (Despite the name, it's only one store.)

I found Nouri's Syrian bread there and another brand I had not seen before, Kings Pita, a thinner Lebanese-style bread, both from Paterson and both $1.50 a package at Sahara. You get more with Nouri's -- 12 loaves weighing 22 ounces versus 6 larger loaves that weigh only 14 ounces. But what I like about Kings Pita is that after a minute or two out of the fridge, it is soft and chewy -- not card-boardy like some Lebanese bread -- perfect for scooping up hummus or wrapping around spicy lamb sausage.



Sahara Stores, 242 S. Summit Ave., Hackensack, 201-487-7222.

Tossing the guacamole

In preparing dinner last night, I had second thoughts about serving guacamole from 2005 I found in the back of the freezer. See post, "What's in your freezer?"

I just now tossed the package into the garbage.

Image via Wikipedia

But I did serve two other side dishes with antibiotic-free Australian shoulder lamb chops that were quick, easy and nutritious -- Middle Eastern fingerling potato salad and collard greens with garlic.

The multicolored potatoes came in a 5-pound bag from Costco. The salad is quick to prepare, but boiling  about three cups of potatoes, which I cut up, took about 20 to 25 minutes. You could do that while the chops are roasting in the oven. After draining the potatoes and running cold water over them, I added:
 
Juice of one big lemon
Two to three ounces of extra-virgin olive oil
Cumin, allspice, Aleppo pepper and salt to taste
Toss and serve

I washed and cut up the collard greens (from H Mart), then blanched them for a few minutes in boiling, salted water. (I have found that if you don't first blanch fresh greens, spinach and similar items, they turn brown.) Using tongs, I transferred the greens to a pan in which I had heated heated extra-virgin olive oil and dehydrated garlic chips, sauteeing them for another four or five minutes. Then I turned off the fire and covered the pan to let the greens steam until I served them.

The only problem, my wife said, is that I didn't make enough. My son thought they needed salt.