On the trail of the best sushi in North Jersey

Isami-san preparing a Sashimi Lunch platter at Tatsumi of Japan, a BYO on River Road in Edgewater.

By Victor E. Sasson

Editor

Japanese-Americans and transplants are fiercely loyal to their favorite restaurants, and many believe Tatsumi of Japan serves the best sushi in North Jersey.

At the restaurant's sushi bar on Monday, I enjoyed a lunch of sashimi -- pristine slices of raw fish -- and watched as Chef Isami-san presented individual pieces of sushi to a Japanese friend who joined me.

The Sashimi Lunch and Sushi Lunch at the Edgewater BYO are $15 each.  

The Sashimi Lunch -- served with miso soup, a small salad and a bowl of rice -- includes cooked octopus and five kinds of raw fish, above and below.

Isami-san took time to partially trim the skin of a lemon slice and curve it artfully.

Art of sushi

One of the pieces of sushi that impressed me visually was a slice of raw salmon Isami-san seared with a small blowtorch and brushed with a sauce of soy, mirin and dashi, a fish-and-kelp stock.

He then topped the fish with a cluster of roe before placing it on rice and presenting it.

Another was a slice of delicious raw fluke fin that had been deboned.

My Sashimi Lunch included slices of yellow tail (hamachi), tuna (maguro), mackerel (saba), Japanese snapper (tai) and fluke (hirami).

A wall niche near the restaurant's entrance.

My short list

After my sashimi lunch, my list of favorite Japanese restaurants expanded from one to two.

Tatsumi joins Hiura, a family run Japanese restaurant in Fort Lee, on my must-visit list. 

I especially enjoy Hiura's bento box lunches of cooked and raw fish.

Tatsumi of Japan, 1034 River Road, Edgewater; 201-969-0202. Open for lunch Tuesdays to Fridays, and for dinner Tuesdays through Sundays. Closed Mondays. Small parking lot, BYO.

Web site: www.tatsumiofjapan.com

Hiura Japanese Restaurant, 400B Main St., Fort Lee; 201-346-0110. Closed Wednesdays. Serves lunch and dinner. Small parking lot, BYO, valet parking at dinner.

See:

From a great lunch at Hiura
to rude shoppers at Whole Foods

With lights back on, time to restock

The prepared foods section at Whole Foods Market in Paramus fed thousands of nearby residents who lost their power in Hurricane Sandy.

The lights came on again Saturday night -- five days after Hurricane Sandy walloped North Jersey, cutting down trees and power lines, and diminishing our sense of security.

This morning, I continued the job of throwing away food from the freezer, including vegetable burgers, falafel, fish sticks, crab substitute and organic mixed vegetables.

I drank fresh-brewed coffee, but without milk, and had nothing for breakfast except Fuji apples, Manchego cheese and fig marmalade.

So, I had an apple and cheese with tea and orange juice from a sealed container.

Then I dashed out to Costco Wholesale in Hackensack for organic milk, carrot juice, salad mix and eggs; non-fat Greek yogurt with fruit, bananas, liquid egg whites and beefsteak tomatoes.

My salad at Whole Foods Market cost less than $5. The store asked customers not to charge mobile devices, because it was operating on a generator "with limited power."

 
On Saturday night, I had a quick dinner at Legal Sea Foods in Paramus: beautifully fried oysters and seaweed salad ($10.95) and a bowl of mussels with a garlicky broth ($10.95), washed down with a flight of red wine ($9.95).

I was rushing to make a movie, "Cloud Atlas," which proved so incomprehensible and trite I left early.

The crowd at the AMC Theaters was manageable, in contrast to past Saturday nights, and the same was true at Costco today.

I guess the lines for gasoline are a blessing in disguise.

Earlier Saturday, I drove over to Whole Foods Market in Paramus for a big, delicious salad and a great cup of coffee.

The seating area was full of shoppers who had lost power, and they related their experiences to one another.

I asked a priest at the next table for divine intervention, and that night my power was restored.

PBS discovers Korean food

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

In January, PBS plans to air a television series called "Kimchi Chronicles" to acquaint viewers with Korean food, or hansik, according to The Korea Times.

Actress Heather Graham, above, travels in South Korea, sampling the food, apparently for the first time, despite a large number of Korean restaurants in Los Angeles. 

Will the PBS station based in Newark air the 13 half-hour programs for New York and North Jersey residents who have enjoyed Korean food for many years?

Click on the following link for a story on the making of the series:

The Korea Times on "Kimchi Chronicles"

I'm off to eat Italy

Image by Montanaro Maurizio™ via Flickr












Chef Mario Batali and his partners have opened another Manhattan emporium of Italian food they call Eataly, but I'm going them one better with a trip to Milan and Venice.

I know the food will be fabulous in the north of Italy, but I've already had a great summer filled with delicious, wild-caught seafood and farm-fresh fruits and vegetables right here in North Jersey.

I plan to take notes and regale you with descriptions of my meals, and I'll try to drop into food stores to see what Italians are buying to prepare at home. I'll be back in under two weeks. 

Italy is where the Slow Food movement began, and the first Eataly opened there as a showcase for the many antidotes to fast food -- a combination market and cafes.

Eating around New Jersey

Image via Wikipedia

 
Food fuels vacation road trips, and we found good things to eat wherever we went in North and South Jersey.

The one special restaurant we wanted to visit -- Eno Terra in Kingston -- was closed for lunch on the Sunday we drove from Newton in Sussex County to Cape May. On Friday, when we drove 165 miles to reach home, we bought Italian-style hoagies for the trip to avoid having to eat fast food (they're called hero sandwiches in North Jersey and grinders in Connecticut).


The highlight of dining out near The Wooden Duck, our B&B off a country lane in Newton, was Salt, a gastro pub. I loved my appetizer portion of seafood risotto with mako shark, farmed salmon and mussels, plus sides of roasted asparagus and sauteed greens. (109 Route 206, Byram; 973-347-7258.)

The next evening, at Dominick's Pizza, I enjoyed a large portion of pleasantly bitter broccoli rabe and linguine with garlic and oil, but found the fried calamari monotonous. (210 E. Clinton St., Newton;  973-383-9330.)

Sumptuous breakfasts at The Wooden Duck included juice, fruit, eggs, French toast, and homemade peach cobbler and crumb cake.

On the drive to Cape May on July Fourth, we got lost and ended up on the Atlantic City Expressway, where service areas offer only fast food. A Starbucks did have a lone sandwich. but I didn't want to eat ham, so settled for a frozen, non-fat vanilla yogurt and black coffee, while my wife and son had a Burger King fish sandwich, milk shake and french fries. My wife hated the sandwich.


Dining improved a great deal in Cape May (Exit Zero on the Garden State Parkway), especially after we found a comfortable seaside hotel, The Marquis De Lafayette on Beach Avenue (I attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, and originally this was the Hotel Lafayette). 

Our first two nights were spent at The Chalfonte, a restored Victorian hotel with small, uncomfortable and very expensive rooms that are undergoing renovation. I referred to our room as "The Icebox," because the air-conditioning blasted, and could not be regulated. Even with doors open to the hallway and our balcony, we were freezing. The bathroom was so small, I could not open the heavy glass shower door without leaving the bathroom, and the window had no curtain or shade.


We ate the buffet breakfast at both The Chalfonte and the Lafayette. The former cost $10 a person, plus a gratuity tacked onto your bill without your knowledge; the latter was included in the rate, but we were asked to leave a gratuity. I basically ate lots of fruit, egg whites and hash browns, plus coffee and juice, at both hotels, but the Lafayette had an omelet maker who made me one with everything green: fresh spinach, broccoli, scallions and green pepper.


Our first dinner was at Freda's Cafe, where I fell on a big bowl of linguine with fresh sea scallops and shrimp in pesto sauce. (210 Ocean St., Cape May.) At Lucky Bones, I ordered a big arugula salad with roasted vegetables, focaccia and a glass of pinot noir. (1200 Route 109, Cape May.)


For lunch one day at Key West Tacos, my son and I had fish tacos (tasty grouper) and my wife ordered crab tacos, which disappointed her, because she couldn't taste any crab. A platter with two tacos, rice and corn chips cost $12, but the woman behind the counter refused to give me salad instead of corn chips. The tacos were made with two flour tortillas, but the fish was buried under a mound of chopped cabbage, rather than traditional onion and cilantro. (479 West Perry St., West Cape May; closed Wednesday.)


We ate a series of good but pricey seafood meals at The Lobster House, an incredibly popular restaurant, raw bar and fish market on Fisherman's Wharf, where a commercial fishing fleet ties up (I guess San Francisco can't claim to have the only Fisherman's Wharf). I saw boats named Mariner and Mekong H. You can't miss the restaurant's sign at the entrance to Cape May.

After a 40-minute wait, I had blackened red fish for dinner one night, while my son ordered a small lobster and my wife chose soft-shell crabs. At other meals, I had raw or steamed Jersey clams, meaty Chesapeake Bay oysters on the half shell and cream-based seafood soups ; my wife and son shared six large steamed crabs from Texas.

The best pizza of the trip was at Tony's, a restaurant that looks like a dump. I asked for fresh spinach and broccoli on a regular pie, baked well-done. The five jumbo shrimp that came with the linguine crunched nicely, but the pasta was in a bland, watery sauce, as if the cook forgot to drain it completely. (1208 Route 109, Cape May.)


We overdid it this past Friday morning, when we left for home, ordering nearly $39 worth of sandwiches and sides at Primo Hoagies (605 Lafayette St., Cape May; 609-884-1177).  I ate the last portion today.


Nonna's Veggie sounded better than it tasted: eggplant, broccoli rabe, sharp provolone and roasted red peppers on a long, sesame-seeded Italian loaf. The middle of three sizes is called primo ($7.99), but it was more than a foot long and I couldn't finish it. 

But the Pescara was terrific, especially heated up at home. Italian tuna straight from three cans was the main component, plus sharp provolone and roasted red peppers ($19.09, twice the size of the primo). Of the three side dshes we tried, the winner was a cheese tortellini salad with hot peppers and crunchy diced carrots.

We ate the sandwiches at a parkway service area, surrounded by other families attacking big plates of fast-food hamburgers, fried chicken and french fries.

(Photo: Cape May gingerbread.)

More hype from New York-based Fairway Market

Fairway Market on opening day in Paramus.(Wikipedia)

If you're not reading the Fairway Market sales flier, you are missing out on one of the slickest marketing campaigns for a supermarket in North Jersey.


Farm-raised shrimp, conventionally raised prime beef -- all of it looks terrific, and there are photos of the humans behind each department at its Paramus store with a quote or two for good measure. 

None of this can obscure the truth -- that Fairway is selling a lot of pretty ordinary food, except for Murray's drug-free chicken, wild seafood  and organic items.


There are some gems, though. 

Whole porgy and whiting for $2.99 a pound is the lowest price I've seen on these fish (the sale starts today). Organic, Fair Trade coffee at $4.99 a pound is a steal. Three pounds of herbicide-free, Campari tomatoes for $5 is another great buy.

Capt. Tony Maltese, a licensed commercial fisherman, is shown and identified as the director of seafood. 

But above his name there is a quote from R.W. Apple Jr., a reporter for The New York Times whose appetite was legendary and who roamed the world to write about food. 

What is this quote doing in the flier and who is the "we" Apple refers to? 

The quote is in bigger type than the attribution, so unless you look closely, you may think the "we" is Fairway and the person being quoted is Capt. Maltese. It's not clear. (Could Apple have covered the opening of a Fairway store in New York before he died and spoken to Maltese?)

"We pay serious attention to the fact that where a fish was caught, how a fish was caught and when it was caught is at least as important as how it is best cooked."

It gets better. Ray Venezia, Fairway's third-generation butcher, also is pictured in the flier.

"It's really very simple. We cut every piece of meat as if we were going to serve it to our own family."

That doesn't say he actually brings home the conventionally raised beef, pork and lamb Fairway sells. In fact, the store sells only American lamb, not the grass-fed, drug- and hormone-free lamb from Australia that you can find at Costco and ShopRite, generally at lower prices than American lamb.


Fairway also doesn't carry naturally raised beef from Australia.

Fairway Market, 34 E. Ridgewood Ave., Paramus; 201-444-5455. Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

Times review of Aleppo Restaurant in Paterson

Image via Wikipedia

Here is David Corcoran's review of Aleppo Restaurant, my favorite place in Paterson, that appears online and on Sunday in The New York Times. It will make your mouth water. (Photo: The Citadel of Aleppo, Syria.) Click on the following link:

A gentle introduction to Syrian cuisine

Shopping adventure in Hackensack

Image by Willscrlt via Flickr

 I had to postpone my weekly trip to Costco in Hackensack yesterday after walking into the store and seeing long lines of shoppers with overflowing carts. North Jersey residents get the day off and what do they do? Shop. But I was hungry, so I abandoned my cart and went  looking for free samples.

There wasn't much: What were those small, dark chocolate things? I had six, then a couple of rice crackers, but the guy with the chips and salsa was trying to sell three bottles of the stuff to another customer and had no samples out.

I headed for the wine and liquor store, next door and not affiliated with Costco. Anyone can shop there. I picked up four bottles of red wine for under $4 each: Crane Lake cabernet from California and Avia shiraz from Chile, not Australia. A fifth bottle,  a Montepulciano D'Abruzzo was $5.99.

When it came time to pay, I pulled out my wallet and saw my Blue Cash Card from American Express was missing. I gave the wine store employee my True Earnings Card, and told him I was going to look for my other card, but as I stepped away, the handle of one of my reusable bags caught the neck of a bottle of $7.99 wine on a display near the register and it went crashing to the floor, splashing our shoes.

I headed back to Costco, first to customer service, then to lost and found, then to the case of Empire kosher chicken parts where I had spoken to a woman, telling her the "all natural" on the package is meaningless and what she wants to look for is poultry without antibiotics. I pulled out my wallet to give her my business card and apparently, the Blue Cash Card went flying to the floor, which is where I found it (it's mostly clear plastic and hard to see unless you're looking for it).

Without further drama, I returned to the wine store, paid and packed my five bottles of wine in another reusable bag, using the first to separate them. The clerk didn't charge me for the broken bottle.

I then drove to H Mart in Little Ferry, about a mile from Costco, and found the Korean supermarket had few customers. It was a pleasure to shop there: 25 cents for a bunch of scallions; $1.29 each for hot house cucumbers 16 inches and 17 inches long from Sunset, which means no herbicides; collard greens that rung up at 79 cents a pound, not the 99 cents on the sign; spicy Korean ramen, 5 packages for $4.99; and two one-pound packages of prepared food -- stir-fried noodles called japchae and seasoned, stewed tofu, $3.99 each.

So my first stop and last stop of the day went smoothly. Before Costco, I went to the Wicker Warehouse, opposite the county jail, to buy a bookshelf.

The woman was nice enough to charge me $149, the price in my catalog at home, and not $169, the higher price effective yesterday with the arrival of a new catalog. The store recently repaired a broken wheel on my wicker armchair for free, replacing the bottom half and all the wheels with an improved design.

For dinner last night, we warmed up the Korean noodles from H Mart, quickly blanched and sauteed the collard greens and enjoyed a roasted-vegetable lasagna from Costco I had in the freezer. It was a satisfying vegetarian meal.

Dog: 'Food is the least of our worries'

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Off The Broiler," the food blog written by my friend Jason Perlow, received a brief but telling comment on my blog -- "Do You Really Know What You're Eating?"-- from one of his readers, identified only as "dog."

Dog's thoughts on food

Gee, what's that in my kimchi?

Image by Taekwonweirdo via Flickr

With the wind howling and temperature falling, is there a better meal than a stone bowl filled with bubbling Korean soft-tofu stew, another bowl of steamed rice and several side dishes? So, last night, right after we placed our order at So Gong Dong in Palisades Park, a waitress brought us four side dishes to quiet our hunger.

We immediately attacked the cabbbage and cucumber kimchis, but my wife and son ignored the other side dishes -- bean sprouts and raw squid in a spicy sauce. Then, my wife's fork uncovered something odd in the cabbage kimchi -- it looked raw, almost rotten. I hit the button on the the table and a chime sounded, summoning a waitress, who said it was just a raw oyster. A raw oyster? My wife was horrified. She hates raw seafood, especially oysters and clams, and refuses even to eat cooked squid or octopus. We gave the waitress our cabbage kimchi and she quickly replaced it and added another dish of  cucumber kimchi.

My first taste of kimchi was in the late 1960s, when my Korean roommate at the University of Missouri-Columbia offered me some. Since the late 1990s, I have eaten it regularly at Korean restaurants in North Jersey, including So Gong Dong, and New York City, and now, I always have a bottle of cabbage kimchi in my refrigerator. I have never in all that time seen an oyster in my kimchi. In fact, the only seafood ingredients listed on the label of the Arirang-brand kimchi I often buy in Englewood are salted shrimp and anchovy sauce.

So Gong Dong offers soft-tofu with oysters and may make its own kimchi, so is it possible one of the oysters fell into the kimchi? Or are oysters an ingredient some kimchi-makers add?

Restaurant So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave., 2nd Floor, 
Palisades Park; 201-313-5550, open seven days.

A great meal any time of the year

Who can resist great food at great prices -- the crusty $2 baguette at Balthazar Bakery in Englewood, the $6.99 restaurant-quality Italian takeout dinners at Jerry's Gourmet, just down South Dean Street from the bakery; and $4.49 for a pound of scrumptious organic spring salad mix at Costco.


You'll find the restaurant version at Lotus Cafe, a popular BYO in Hackensack, where the multi-course dinners for four, six or eight are both filling and delicious -- among the best Chinese food in North Jersey. And you'll pay $20 or less per person, including tax and tip.


Last night, our party made a 6 p.m. reservation and ordered food for six from the special price-fix dinner and banquet menu.  We were four adults and three children -- 12, 10 and under 2 years old. With three light eaters, we had plenty of leftovers.


We were served eight courses, with lots of greens: seafood and tofu chowder, three-cup chicken casserole, crispy, aromatic duck; pepper and salty prawns, beef with chili pepper and mustard green, fillet of sole with yellow chive, stir-fried Chinese broccoli with fresh garlic, and ice cream and fruit. Because we are good customers, we also received a warm Chinese rice pudding on the house.


In the past week, I was unsuccessful in finding seven people to join my wife, son and I for a Dutch treat New Year's Eve banquet meal for 10 -- 12 courses for about $27 per person, including Peking duck, prawns, filet mignon, whole fish and braised noodles. 


Lotus Cafe, 450 Hackensack Ave., Hackensack, in Home Depot-
Pathmark Shopping Center; 201-488-7070; open seven days.

Supermarkets that overcharge

I do a lot of food shopping in North Jersey and hate to be overcharged. Typically, the store hasn't reset its computers to the sale price and an item scans at the higher price. Sure, I look at my register receipt before I leave the store, most of the time. But on occasion, I don't discover the mistake until I get home, then have to decide whether returning to the store is worth it.

Here is a link to a story in the New York Post on overcharges by supermarkets in the city. You'll see a lot of familiar names:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/the_price_all_wrong_how_city_stores_FsJJYt51Cc844MnMq8MpRJ



See next post: "Is there a supermarket price war?"

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.

Two store-bought Thanksgiving dinners

I've reserved my sleek heritage turkey and I'm planning a simple menu at home for Thanksgiving, but you can avoid all the work by buying complete dinners at several North Jersey markets.

Comparing offerings by Fairway Market in Paramus and Maywood's Marketplace, you'd get a far better deal and can feed more people with the dinner from the mid-size specialty market in bustling Maywood.




Fairway is preparing dinner for six at $119 and dinner for 12 at $199. For six, the Maplecrest turkey is 10-12 pounds and appears to be raised conventionally with antibiotics. Also, Fairway doesn't say whether the bird's feed was vegetarian. You might be able to substitute a drug-free, free-roaming Murray's turkey or an organic bird, at higher cost.


Maywood's Marketplace says its dinner will feed 12 people for $99.99 or $129.99, if you want fruit salad and steamed veggies. The turkey weighs 18 pounds and appears to be raised conventionally.

Dinners from both markets include the turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy and one (Fairway) or two pies. Fairway also gives you soup, sweet potatoes and dinner rolls.

The Fairway flier that came with today's paper is heralding a Thanksgiving stock-up sale Nov. 20-26 in Parmaus "priced like it's 1999 -- woo-hoo."

Fairway Market, Fashion Center Mall, Route 17 north, Paramus; 201-267-9700. 
 www.fairwaymarket.com


Maywood's Marketplace, 78 W. Pleasant Ave., Mayroood; 201-843-8361. 
www.wmarketnyc.com

Traveling on your stomach at Costco

Image via Wikipedia

Costco in Hackensack has become one of my favorite places to shop for food -- despite the crowds, the frantic parking lot and some inconsiderate shoppers, who think nothing of leaving a cart up against your fender.

You never know what you'll find there or how far it has traveled. And no store in North Jersey I know of can match the prices for this quality food and produce. It's even a better deal when you consider the cash rebates from the American Express Costco credit card easily reimburse you for the annual membership fee.

The past two Fridays, I saw whole red snappers from Nicaragua in the fish case. Smoked wild sockeye salmon (preservative free) from Alaska is now sold year-round under the store brand, Kirkland. Last night, I finished the last fresh flounder fillet from Iceland we had fried Friday.

Last week, I bought a 12-pound box of oranges from South Africa. The antioxidant-rich acai berry juice in my fridge is from Brazil. For my espresso machine, I've also brought home a 4-pound bag of whole coffee beans grown in Africa. And I'm working on a big wedge of Manchego sheep-milk's cheese from Spain.

Costco sells a ranch full of beef and pork, but all of them are conventionally raised with antibiotics, except for organic ground beef. What you want is the grass-fed, free-range lamb from Australia, usually available as chops or boneless legs.

The store also stocks a lot of terrific food grown domestically, such as the one-pound package of Earthbound Farms organic spring mix I eat weekly.

Of course, there is also the possibility you'll buy and like an item, then find the store no longer stocks it. I recall fondly the fully prepared, drug-free lamb shanks in mint sauce from New Zealand that we enjoyed on a few occasions, but never saw again.

For commentary on food coverage in The Record, see:
http://eyeontherecord.blogspot.com/

Too little, too late

After virtually ignoring for at least two years how the food she writes about has been raised or grown, restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung of The Record has a column on the Better Living front today listing places that serve organic items, wild fish or meat and poultry free of antibiotics. She lists five eating places in all of North Jersey.

This past Friday, her restaurant review displayed no such sensibility. She is an inconsistent voice for the consumer. She has spent far more time obsessing over the quality of desserts she has encountered in her reviewing and feature stories.

The Record could be of even more service to readers by listing supermarkets that sell naturally raised food, but that might run afoul of the drive for advertising revenue.

Tasting and shopping notes

Image via Wikipedia

The block of smoked-mackerel sushi from Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater didn't disappoint. (See previous post.)  In fact, my wife, who squirms at the the thought of eating raw fish, loved the slices she tried. I ate mine without wasabi or soy sauce and they nicely set up our dinner of frozen wild sockeye salmon in a light Asian sauce.

I placed the frozen salmon (from Costco) in a glass plate set atop my steamer (it didn't fit inside), in a shallow pool of olive and sesame oils, fish sauce and cheap sake. I sprinkled salt on the fillets, rubbed them with coarse red Aleppo pepper and steamed them about 20 minutes for medium, serving the fish with leftover rice and peas, salad and pita bread.

The latest batch of Aleppo pepper I purchased from Fattal's on Main Street in Paterson is noticeably darker than what I had and noticeably spicier, a good thing. I keep it in a plastic container in the freezer and sprinkle it over eggs, fish and chicken, but wonder if the intensity fades over time.

I forgot to mention I bought aged Manchego sheep-milk's cheese from Spain at Costco the other day. The price, $8.29 a pound, is 70 cents less than the sale price at Fairway Market in Paramus and several dollars less than the regular price. Storage tip: Trim off the inedible rind, slice the wedge into three pieces and wrap each in plastic wrap before placing them in a freezer bag in the fridge. This also works with a large wedge of Reggiano Parmigiano.

North Jersey markets are running some good sales, starting today.  

Fairway Market has three pounds of herbicide-free Campari tomatoes for $5, three heads of organic romaine for $2.99 and Columbia supremo coffee for $4.99 a pound. Stop & Shop is reprising its sale on drug-free Australian shoulder lamb chops, $3.69 a pound for three pounds or more. And two markets on Railway Avenue in Paterson, El Campesino and El Rancho, are selling limes or lemons at 10 for 99 cents, 20 pounds of Canilla rice for $3.99, three cups of La Yogurt (6 ounces) for 99 cents, Lactaid milk for $4.99 (96 ounces) and Hass avocados, 2 for 99 cents.

If you think Paterson is going too far for food, stop first at Aleppo Restaurant, at Main and Thomas streets, or Hummus Restaurant across the street for a nice lunch, pick up Syrian bread and spices at Fattal's down the strteet, then go food shopping. Hungry food shoppers spend more, research has shown.

They are like no other empanadas

If you live in North Jersey, you've probably eaten plenty of Colombian, Peruvian and Cuban empanadas, not to mention Jamaican patties, Syrian spinach pies and other hand-held delights.

But I am sure you've never eaten anything like the oversized, delicious, dough-wrapped treats from Julia's Empanadas in Washington, D.C., our first stop during our road trip. These empanadas are hand-made, with beautifully turned edges and an eggwash, and each filling has its own distinct shape. I had to park two blocks away from the unassuming takeout shop in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood, but it was worth the hassle.

We enjoyed empanadas filled with chorizo, spinach and cheese, Jamaican-style jerk chicken and Indian-style curry chicken. We also had the daily vegetarian empanada. Each was priced at $3.41. The closest I've found in North Jersey is the empanada stuffed with ground beef, half of a hard-boiled egg and raisins at Pollos El Chevere, the Peruvian rotisserie-chicken place in Passaic.

North Jersey's pita bread wars

I have been eating pita bread all my life and can recall the enterprising salesman who hawked bread baked in Brooklyn from a baby carriage he pushed through the sun-splashed streets when we summered in Bradley Beach, part of the annual migration of Sephardic Jews. We called it Syrian bread back then and the loaves were a foot across.

When I moved to North Jersey three decades ago, I naturally gravitated to the Middle Eastern food bazaar in the South Paterson section of Paterson that straddles the Clifton border. As the years passed, great pita bread bakeries came and went, including Amir's, which formed the bread by hand and turned out a deliciously chewy loaf that stood up to stuffing with meat, salad, hummus and whatever else you could cram into it. In those days, no preservatives were used -- just flour, yeast, water and salt.

Today, only a few bakeries in Paterson sell the bread, including Fattal's and Nouri's. But for a decade or more, I have noticed a preference at some restaurants for the thinner, Lebanese-style pita over the slightly thicker Syrian-style loaf. No big deal you would think, but some Lebanese restaurants refused to buy freshly baked local pita and served thinner bread imported from Canada that often was cardboardy and didn't stand up to stuffing with food.

Fattal's loaf, although it is no longer baked in Paterson, has been my preferred bread since Amir's handmade, preservative-free, Lebanese-stlye pita disappeared. Despite the addition of calcium propionate to retard spoilage, Fattal's pita is pliable and stands up well to heating in the toaster. (Calcium propionate is an organic salt that inhibits the growth of mold and is considered one of the safest food additives, according to science.jrank.org.)

This week, I purchased a bag of Nouri's pita and found it is thinner and doesn't heat as well or stand up as well to stuffing. And since any meal can be eaten stuffed into pita, a pita you can't stuff is a pita you don't want.