Does anybody still eat iceberg lettuce?

Image by joana hard via Flickr

What's the attraction of iceberg lettuce? Does it have any nutritional value?

You can't miss rising produce prices, but now, ShopRite supermarkets north of Trenton are doing something about it.

The sales flier in my newspaper this morning labeled three deals with the word "WOW!" in red -- store-made Italian sausage, DiGiorno Pizza and California-grown iceberg lettuce for 99 cents a head (24 size), a price cut of 50 cents, with a store card.

Limit is 1, but before you rush out the door, the sale doesn't start until Sunday, April 3. 

Does anybody still eat iceberg lettuce? Isn't it just cheap filler used by restaurants in salads or put on the plate as decoration to hold tuna salad?

I can't remember the last time I ate iceberg. During road trips in the 1960s and 1970s, my older brother used to walk into diners and loudly demand "hearts of lettuce," meaning the best part of the iceberg, if that's even possible.

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Romaine lettuce goes green.

Romaine lettuce is far better, but for my money, I prefer Earthbound Farms organic spring mix from Costco in Hackensack, where one pound of this delicious, multicolored salad was $4.39 on Thursday.

The price for the pre-washed salad fluctuates, and has been as high $4.99, but that's $2 less than ShopRite and other supermarkets. A one-pound package yields seven medium-size or five large salads, and the mix makes a great sandwich stuffer.

If you insist on iceberg or romaine lettuce, I am sure you can do far better than ShopRite on price for that item and others at Brothers Produce on East Railway Avenue in the Paterson Farmers' Market.

 

More about the fish at Costco Wholesale

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Atlantic Ocean cod fisheries have collapsed.

Under pressure from Greenpeace, Costco Wholesale has halted sales of five wild-caught fish species that are on the environmental group's "red list" of over-fished species, including Greenland halibut, certain types of grouper and skates and rays.

I don't recall seeing any of those in the more than five years I have been shopping at Costco in Hackensack.

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, Costco stopped selling seven other species on the Greenpeace list, including Atlantic cod, Chilean sea bass and orange roughy.

I've been buying fresh cod fillets at Costco recently, but they are from the Pacific Ocean and labeled "True Cod." 

Dipped in an egg-milk mixture, breaded and baked, this cod makes for wonderful eating. It's a meaty, flaky white fish that fills your mouth. This morning, I had a piece leftover from dinner on Tuesday topped with two fried eggs -- sunny side up.

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Another Korean enclave

In Closter, you can get your hair cut by a Korean barber or have your nails done in a Korean salon, enjoy a lunch of Korean dumplings and cold noodles, and then have dessert and coffee at a Korean bakery.

A few blocks away from those merchants, who are in the Closter Plaza shopping center, the small downtown is filled with more food choices.

After my haircut and coffee, I stopped at a catering shop called Doorebak for a jar of homemade cabbage kimchi, stewed tofu in red-pepper sauce and the translucent Korean noodles known as japchae. 

Doorebak, 218 Closter Dock Road, Closter.

Good deal on olives

Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood has mixed Italian olives for $3.99 a pound, among the lowest olive prices I've seen in North Jersey. I bought a large container with green and black olives of various sizes, plus crunchy, whole garlic cloves. Delish.

Fairway Market and Whole Foods Market , both in Paramus, charge at least $7.99 a pound for olives. In Fairway, a sign posted above the open pails of olives warns shoppers about behaving badly.

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

ShopRite produce prices

I found seedless red grapes from Chile for $1.29 a pound with a store card at ShopRite in Rochelle Park, but sweet peppers were $1.99 to $2.49 a pound -- compared to 99 cents a pound at Brothers Produce in the Paterson Farmers' Market.

If you go to Paterson for cheap produce, you can stop at Fattal's Bakery on Main Street for fresh-baked Syrian pocket bread, Moroccan sardines for 99 cents a can, and olives for $2.99 to $4.99 a pound.

Brothers Produce, 327 E. Railway Ave., Paterson; 973-684-4461.

Fattal's Syrian Bakery, 975-77 Main St., Paterson; 973-742-7125.
 

Where to go for cheap produce

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Take your pick. Sweet peppers are 99 cents a pound at Brothers Produce.

Cold weather in Mexico and Florida has sent produce prices soaring everywhere, it seems, except at the Paterson Farmers' Market, where the stores were crowded today with bargain hunters.

I was pressed for time, but stopped at Brothers Produce, with its sidewalk displays of peppers, tomatoes, lemons and other items. Inside, you'll find plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, along with groceries, dairy products and imported Middle Eastern food.

Sweet green, red, yellow and orange peppers were 99 cents a pound, as were plump plum or Roma tomatoes; large, shrink-wrapped gourmet cucumbers were two for $1, and lemons were seven for $1.

An employee was unpacking fresh spinach, and I took two large bunches right from the box for $1.

Driscoll's strawberries were $1.49 for 16 ounces, and raspberries and blackberries were $1.49 each for 6 ounces. I also picked up a bottle of date syrup from Lebanon for $3.49, ideal for making a seltzer-based drink or for topping ice cream or yogurt.

I didn't have time to check out the prices for leafy greens or garlic, but scanning the aisles, the most common price I saw was 99 cents a pound.

Prices also were low down the street at Farmer's Produce, but so was the quality of some of the items. I saw Earthbound Farm's organic greens with a sell-by date of Feb. 14.

The lemons looked good, however, at eight for $1. Stick with Brothers for everything else.

Paterson has long been known as Silk City, but today it resembled Pothole City. Streets were filled with litter, and even the South Paterson neighborhood of restaurants, bakeries and pastry shops looked drab as a steady drizzle fell.


Brothers Produce, 327 E. Railway Ave., Paterson; 973-684-4461.

At La Ziza Restaurant in Clifton

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

La Ziza is a Lebanese restaurant near the Paterson Farmers' Market that opened recently in the space once occupied by Al Assayad.

Unfortunately, the use of a hookah (photo) is allowed in the dining room, a concession to smokers that drove me away from the old place.

Luckily, only a few other tables were occupied while I had dinner last night, and I didn't find the fruity smoke a problem. I asked Jamal, the waiter, if smoking the water pipe improved the appetite, and he said he didn't think so.


I watched people at the next table as they ate, then smoked a little and then returned to eating. I still don't get it.


At the old place, to get away from the smoking, we asked to be seated on the second floor. But the service was poor, because the waiter had to run up and down the stairs.


Fortunately, the food at La Ziza is good enough to persuade me to return with my wife and son.


After I placed my order, I got the usual plate of pickles and olives, and warm, chewy pocket bread, which, as is the custom at Arabic restaurants, is microwaved in the plastic bag (with a small opening).


I enjoyed a fatoush salad ($6.95), which combines romaine lettuce with cucumbers, tomato, onion and fried bread chunks in a lemony dressing that includes powdered sumac. I wasn't sure whether it was sumac, because it lacked the sourness of the sumac used in the za'atar thyme mixture.
 
I ordered the fried whiting listed on the menu ($12.95), and received a platter of rice with fried bread sandwiching four whole fish, each about seven to eight inches long. They had been quickly fried, leaving a crunchy tail and head and moist flesh along the bone. Wonderful. I ate two fish there and the rest for dinner tonight at home.


Strong, smooth Arabic coffee came in a small pot ($2), enough for two cups.


This would be a terrific place for maza, the meal of small plates chosen from the appetizers, such as fava beans and spicy potatoes, to name just two of the meatless items. But carnivores will find plenty of meat throughout the menu.

La Ziza Restaurant, 341 Crooks Ave., Clifton
(Crooks Avenue divides Paterson and Clifton);
973-772-2700.

For an update on La Ziza, see North Jersey-style food run

A rare visit to Corrado's Family Affair

Image by Kurt Wagner via Flickr

I once shopped regularly at Corrado's Family Affair, the large ethnic supermarket near the Clifton-Paterson border. I loved the aisle with bread from two dozen or more ethnic bakeries and the bottles of imported wine -- three for $10.

The store sold many Italian specialties under its own label, including extra-virgin olive oil and pastas. It always stocked pasta with squid ink, one of my favorites. Corrado's also opened food and non-food stores across Getty Avenue.

But the inexpensive imported wine became scarcer and prices for some items seemed better elsewhere, such as sardines at Fattal's Bakery on Main Street in Paterson. And I didn't like how the store sometimes pasted price labels over the expiration dates for Earthbound Farm salad mixes. So I went back to Corrado's less frequently, and visited the new Wayne supermarket only a couple of times (photo).

On the way back from Morristown yesterday, I stopped at Fattal's for bread, canned hummus, yogurt drink and a few other items, then headed over to Corrado's for the lemons I needed to prepare hummus. It had really big lemons at six for $1.99. I bought four, plus a red pepper at 99 cents a pound and a seedless cucumber for 75 cents. A 1-liter bottle of black currant syrup was $4.89 (to pour over plain yogurt).

The interior was renovated a couple of months ago and painted, an employee said. But you still won't find any signs in the crowded aisles, and shopping there is something of a treasure hunt. Customers are friendly and talkative -- unlike the snobs that frequent Fairway Market in Paramus.

At Corrado's, I noticed that a lot of the produce seem wilted, despite the almost constant stocking of bins. For example, I saw loose romaine lettuce with brown bottoms -- not a good sign. And I didn't even look at the bread aisle.

On the way home, I went to Crooks and East Railway avenues, where the Paterson Farmers' Market has set up shop year-round. Looking over produce at several stores, the prices here seemed even better than at Corrado's, but I was disappointed in not being able to find the dozen containers of organic, Greek-style yogurt that I bought Feb. 6 for only $2. "Probably Friday," the woman said.


 Corrado's Family Affair, 1578 Main Ave., 
Clifton; 973-340-0628. Web site:  Corrado's

Farmers' Market bargains (revisited)

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In my previous post on the Paterson Farmers' Market, "Follow the tracks to great food buys," I forgot to list another Stonyfield Farm yogurt item on sale at Eastern Groceries -- an 8-pack of organic YoKids Squeezers for $1.

And I was mistaken when I said the expiration date of the Earthbound Farm organic heirloom lettuce leaves was in four days (Feb. 10). That was the case for the organic spring mix I saw there, but when I went to use the lettuce last night, I saw the expiration date was Jan. 30.

Still, they made a beautiful salad last night and I used them again in breakfast sandwiches this morning. Unlike the more delicate spring mix beyond the expiration date, the lettuce showed no signs of deterioration and I plan to buy more in the future ($1 for 7 ounces).