The best dumpling is a tasty dumpling

Image by su-lin via Flick

Fried Korean dumplings served with two sauces.

Who doesn't like Korean dumplings or mandoo?

They're filled with beef, shrimp or vegetables -- sometimes in combination -- and they're a tasty appetizer for a Korean restaurant meal. 

But if you live in North Jersey, you can buy these wonderful dumplings at Best Dumplings in downtown Englewood, the successor to Mandoo Inc., which opened about 16 years ago down a pothole-filled street in the city's industrial section. 

They are fully cooked, so we steam them from frozen for 10 to 15 minutes and serve them with soy sauce or a dumpling sauce you can get at any Korean or Japanese supermarket. Almost any sauce that contains soy sauce will do or you can choose a spicy Korean red-pepper sauce or paste. 

They also can be pan fried or deep fried or added to soup.

We use a large, metal steamer, but line it with a paper towel to prevent the dumplings from sticking. When they are done, you can lift the paper towel and dumplings out of the steamer and put them on a plate for serving.

I stopped at Best Dumplings on Tuesday, when I had to fill a prescription at the ShopRite in Englewood, and learned a few things. 

I wanted non-meat dumplings, but a young woman who works there said the freezer bags labeled "kimchi" and "leek" contain dumplings that are made with a little beef. 

She pointed to a piece of paper on the wall with the ingredients of each dumpling sold there. She said over the phone today none of the dumplings contain pork.

I bought three freezer bags of dumplings -- vegetable, shrimp with broccoli and shrimp with vegetable. Each bag contains at least four dozen 3-inch-long dumplings. My bill came to $41 or about 28 cents for each dumpling. 

Best Dumplings, 16 Humphrey St., Englewood; 201-568-9337.

ShopRite answers competitors

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The ShopRite sales flier delivered with my newspaper this morning answers the beef sales of three competitors, noted in my previous post, How low can they go on beef prices?

USDA choice, top round London broil is on sale for $1.49 a pound and Certified Angus Beef London broil is going for $1.99 a pound, both with a Price Plus card. This is conventionally raised beef, so you'll also be eating antibiotics, growth hormones and, probably, animal byproducts (bits of dead animals, kitchen scraps and so forth in cattle feed).

We're not eating beef right now, but if we were, I'd go to ShopRite and check out its price for Australian free-range, grass-fed filet mignon, which is raised without any of the nasty stuff and sold here at lower prices than U.S. beef.

Grass-fed beef is a natural

Image via Wikipedia

Grass-raised and finished beef is a rarity in most supermarkets. It's more expensive than conventionally raised beef, but it cooks faster and is better for you. Here is more about grass-fed beef from Whole Foods Market, whose blog (Whole Story) is listed to the right of this post. The Paramus store has sold grass-fed beef raised in New Jersey for $9.99 a pound (on sale). Just click on the link below:
 
Whole Foods Market blog

Whose supermarket guru?

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All of us want to save money when we shop for food, but we also want to avoid poultry and meat from factory farms, some farmed seafood and produce treated with a lot of pesticides.

However, none of this is discussed in "Save at the Supermarket," an article in the January & February 2010 issue of AARP The Magazine. The author is Phil Lempert, identified as the Supermarket Guru, who appears regularly on the Today Show and The View.

Lempert doesn't mention the antibiotics, hormones or animal by-products used to rush the growth of chickens, cattle, pigs and other animals; he doesn't discuss the merits of wild v. farmed seafood, which could be artificially colored or carry contaminants; and he doesn't recommend Australian beef and lamb, free-range, grass-fed products that are usually cheaper than their conventionally raised U.S. cousins

So whose Supermarket Guru is he?

I wrote a letter pointing out some of these omissions, and AARP The Magazine informed me it did not have room to publish it.

This is the same issue with an article on fish that omits the benefits of sardines.

Whole Foods Market discusses the use of antibiotics in animals on its blog: No antibiotics -- ever

'I hate to eat healthy'

Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix is an important part of a healthy diet, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When I recommended this food blog to a lawyer I met yesterday, he immediately came back with: 

"I hate to eat healthy."

From his conversation with others, I guessed that his wife is not much of a cook and that the most he could expect at home that night was a warmed-up meal from a nearby takeout place. 

When he was growing up, did his mother put a delicious, home-cooked meal on the table every night, as my mother did, fostering a life-long appreciation for good food?

I would imagine he has never stepped foot inside a food store or looked carefully at labels on the processed stuff that passes for food these days. 

Does he know that most of the poultry and beef sold in supermarkets was raised in horrible conditions on factory farms, pumped up with antibiotics and stuffed with feed containing bits of dead animals? 

Or that most salmon served in restaurants is artificially colored? 

He doesn't seem to care.

When I looked at this man, who appeared to be in his late 40s and wore a standard-issue, off-the-rack suit and a boring tie, he didn't really look that healthy. 

At one point, I said I had forgotten his last name and he told me he was "Joe Shmoe." That said it all. He probably shoves any old crap into his mouth.

"I hate to eat healthy."  Isn't that a ridiculous statement? That lawyer is out of order. Naturally raised food tastes far better than conventionally raised fare.

A salad of organic greens is so far above what is served in most places these days, it is a thing of beauty. 

(Indeed, we sent out for lunch and I couldn't finish a Greek salad delivered by a local deli: iceberg lettuce, crappy sliced tomatoes, no stuffed grape  leaves.)

Finding healthy food in supermarkets and on restaurant menus is so worth the effort. 

The feeling of well-being when you sit down to a great meal -- dining in or dining out -- cannot be matched by blindly stuffing your face. 

And an added bonus is gathering family or friends around you for a daily celebration of life.

Where to find a really great burger

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I have never eaten a beef  hamburger at Fuddruckers, but I am a loyal fan of its naturally raised ostrich burger and its great salad bar. Fuddruckers opened its Paramus restaurant about 20 years ago, the pioneer among so-called better burger chains in North Jersey.

My wife and I had a terrific lunch there yesterday, but noted a few changes from our last visit.

 The red-meat ostrich burger, which has much less fat than a beef burger,  is one-third of a pound and comes from New Jersey-based Fossil Farms, which sells naturally raised meat from many animals -- alligators to yaks (Web site link is below).

Fuddruckers offers other alternatives to its hamburgers -- two kinds of farmed fish, chicken and buffalo, and you can sip wine or beer with your meal. One of its best features is the salad bar, which allows you to add freshly made salsa with cilantro and sliced jalapeno peppers to your burger, as I did along with ketchup and mustard. But you can no longer get a baked potato in place of the excellent skin-on fries, and you seem to be penalized if you order cole slaw with your burger, but not fries.

My wife ordered a half-pound beef burger for $5.49 and added cole slaw and fries for $2 more. I added only cole slaw to my ossi burger ($6.99) and it cost me $1.39 more. Fuddruckers says it beef hamburgers are made from fresh, prime beef, the highest USDA grade, which has the most fat of the three grades, and that the cattle were vegetarian-fed. This means they weren't fed animal by-products -- kitchen scraps and bits of dead animals.

The ostrich burger has so little fat, Fossil Farms recommends you order it medium rare, which I did yesterday, but I have also ordered it medium and it has always been moist and delicious. A quarter-bottle of merlot ($4.50) went well with the orstrich.

You can keep your Smashburgers, your Five Guys burgers, your Bobby Flay burgers -- all made from cattle raised conventionally. These places seem to spend more money on marketing than on ingredients, and gushing articles about them in The Record make them suspect. If I want a beef burger, I go to Tasteatery in Fort Lee for one of its wonderful, naturally raised, grass-fed patties, such as the West Coast burger with greens and hummus.


Fuddruckers, 282 Route 4 east, Paramus, 201-343-4533,
open seven days. Second restaurant on Route 23, Wayne.


http://www.fuddruckers.com/

Other Web sites:


Tasteatery


From alligator to yak

Shrill sales circular from Fairway Market

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New York-based Fairway Market has been pushing U.S. prime beef since it opened a store in Paramus this year, but its latest sales circular has a shrill tone and the text is full of exclamation marks. I guess all of this is designed to distract shoppers from knowing how the cattle were raised.

"This is what we're talking about!" and "Great food! Great prices! Only at Fairway!" are two of the large-type sentences displayed around a seasoned USDA prime porterhouse steak with grill marks, on sale Jan. 1-7 for $8.99 a pound. 

Prime is the top grade assigned to beef by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (choice and select are the other grades) and signifies that this meat has the highest fat content.

But that's it. Prime can be raised conventionally, with growth hormones, antibiotics and animal by-products -- bits of dead animals -- in the feed. The circular is silent on how the cattle were raised. 

The ad text says, "This is serious steakhouse steak! This ain't no supermarket steak! Could there be anything more glorious on the face of the Earth! We think not." 

Well, little, old me thinks so. The cattle could be free range, rather than being confined in enormous, manure-filled feed lots (the animals are usually covered in manure when they enter, or are dragged, into the slaughterhouse, and feces often gets into ground beef). They could be grass fed, instead of being pumped full of grain, which can make them sick, and animal byproducts could be banned from their feed.

I'm sure this prime beef tastes good and $8.99 a pound is a great price, but you can find grass-fed beef on sale at Whole Foods Market, also in Paramus, for around $9.99 a pound. What do the arrogant New York owners of Fairway have to say about that?

Shopping and cooking notes

Besides the free-range, grass-fed Australian beef I went for, I had hoped to pick up a few other things on my trip to the ShopRite in Rochelle Park yesterday, but prices were all over the place.

As I walked into the store, I saw a stack of boxes with clementines, not from Spain but from Morocco, for a low $4.99 with a store card. But not far away, a 2-pound package of the elusive herbicide-free Campari tomatoes were priced at  $7.99 -- $4 a pound. I just stared at the price sign in disbelief. I did pick up two pointy cantaloupes from Guatemala for $3.

The Australian whole tenderloin for filet mignon was on sale for $4.99 a pound with a store card, but I couldn't find any that weighed more than 4.6 pounds, even though the sales circular said average weight was 6 pounds to 8 pounds. It's sold under the Nature's Reserve label. Next to it, the same cut of beef marked USDA Select -- the lowest of three U.S. government grades -- was on sale for $6.99 a pound. Why is free-range, grass-fed beef selling for $2 a pound less than conventionally raised beef? The sale ends Saturday.

When I got home, I trimmed as much fat as possible from the tenderloin, sliced it thin and divided it among three freezer bags, pouring on Korean bulgogi marinade (it looked similar to what is shown in photo above). They went into the freezer, enough for three meals of Korean barbecue at home with rice, red-leaf lettuce for wrapping and store-bought side dishes.

Then I prepared dinner -- spaghetti with sardines. This is not the classic Italian recipe of  pasta con sarde, which uses a tomato-less sauce . This is a thrown together recipe that takes only the time needed to boil the pasta.

I used three cans of Moroccan sardines in tomato sauce I bought at Fattal's Bakery in Paterson for 89 cents a can (Fattal's has the best sardine prices around). The sardines have no oil, so I poured three or four ounces of extra-virgin oilive oil over the fish in the pan, then added about a cup and a half of  leftover marinara sauce, dried Italian seasoning, basil and oregano, and red pepper flakes. Meanwhile, I boiled a half-pound of thick spaghetti.

With a big salad of organic salad greens, bread and Italian red wine, it was a satisfying, meatless meal, but I should have made more spaghetti, my 12-year-old son said.

ShopRite of Rochelle Park, 220 W. Passaic St.;

(201) 843-1424; open 24 hours.

Fattal's Bakery, 975 Main St.; (973) 742-7125;

Paterson; open seven days.

Two more meatless meals

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Tonight, I plan to serve my wife and son spaghetti with sardines in tomato sauce as a follow-up to last night's meal -- one of Jerry's Neapolitan pizzas with a big salad and Italian red wine.

We're trying to cut down on our consumption of beef, but we're not giving it up altogether. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm heading to the ShopRite in Rochelle Park today to buy an Australian whole beef tenderloin for filet mignon -- on sale for $4.99 a pound with a store card. The cattle are free range and grass fed, and raised without antibiotics and growth hormones.

I'll trim the fat, slice this beef  thin and store it in freezer bags with Korean bulgogi marinade from H Mart. Then, we'll be able to enjoy Korean barbecue at home without having to fret over the mystery meat most restaurants serve for cooking on the table.

And Sunday night at home, we did enjoy Australian shoulder lamb chops I bought at Pathmark for under $3 a pound. I served them with mashed potatoes and sauteed broccoli.

Strategies for avoiding beef

For the past month, we haven't knowingly eaten beef in a restaurant or at home, as we try to boost our already large intake of fish, pasta, vegetables and fruit.

We haven't been able to give up poultry, though, and rely on antibiotic-free chicken or turkey for home-cooked meals at least once a week. And we have had a couple of meals of naturally raised Australian lamb. But we also have had dinners of falafel and cheese-and-spinach ravioli, and try to eat a salad with every meal. We don't eat dessert, preferring fresh and dried fruit and nuts, though we occasionally eat sweet rice cakes or other cakes stuffed with red bean paste (Korean or Japanese).

Only my wife's and son's complaints prevent me from preparing pasta two times a week. And I usually have to serve it with drug-free chicken meatballs or sausage I get at Costco.

Having said all this, I did notice today that ShopRite will be putting on sale free-range, grass-fed whole beef tenderloin from Australia, for $4.99 a pound with a store card, from Dec. 6-12 at  the Rochelle Park, Paramus and Englewood stores. Average weight is 6 to 8 pounds. We have bought this beef in the past to prepare Korean barbecue, which used to be one of my son's favorite meals.

Image via Wikipedia

A healthy, filling seafood meal

In one visit to H Mart in Little Ferry yesterday, I picked up fresh red snapper and blue crabs and two prepared fish dishes to make a bountiful meal for my family.

The seafood meal helped us to avoid beef  for another day. Both my wife and son say they want to eat less meat, including goat, oxtail and pork.

I had the fishmonger clean and cut up the wild-caught red snapper into small steaks, with the head and tail, and cooked them in a soup of cheap sake, soy and fish sauces, rice wine and vinegar. I poured the excess sauce over Hong Kong-style spinach noodles I boiled. The crabs, which snapped at my tongs in the store, were boiled separately in seasoned water with hot pepper. I also blanched and sauteed fresh collard greens left over from Thanksgiving.

Our appetizers were prepared whiting two ways: Korean-style pancakes and chunks of the small fish stewed with hot and sweet peppers. It was a great meal.

H Mart, 260 Bergen Turnpike, Little Ferry; 201-814-0400;
open seven days.

Sobering look at how beef is raised

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Here is a long essay -- with a frightening last paragraph -- about how beef is raised in the United States. At the outset, the writer seems to be recommending grass-fed beef over corn- or grain-fed cattle, but he's really down on the environmental and health impact of eating beef, not to mention the brutality shown to the animals.

http://foodrevolution.org/grassfedbeef.htm

Fourth H Mart opens in Bergen County

 I visited the new H Mart in Fort Lee yesterday, the fourth supermarket opened by the Lyndhurst-based Korean chain in Bergen County. The company, which used to be known as Han Ah Reum, has stores in more than a dozen states.

The Fort Lee store appears to be bigger than the one in Englewood, where I shopped for years, but smaller than the Little Ferry supermarket, which is closer to my Hackensack home.

Fort Lee has the usual, great selection of fresh fish at relatively low prices. It's also the first H Mart I've seen that carries Coleman organic chicken and a second brand that says the birds are raised on a vegetarian diet without antibiotics. But I didn't see any beef  that was raised naturally, despite the importance of meat to the Korean diet.

There is also a terrific selection of greens, including Chinese broccoli, choy sum, regular and baby bok choy, and collard, plus others I'm not familiar with. I took home some leafy Chinese broccoli, but overcooked it. There is no food counter, as in other stores, but a French-Asian bakery called Tous Les Jours has a few tables for coffee and pastry.

The store, which has been open about three weeks in the old Kings Super Market space, didn't seem to have any real bargains, though it's possible it hasn't staged a grand opening yet. I also bought two prepared items: soft, sweet rice cakes with pumpkin and japchae, the translucent noodle dish made from sweet potatoes.

The company motto is: Better Food Better Living (no punctuation) and there is a cute video on its Web site showing a pregnant Korean woman sitting at home, reading and sipping tea, while her husband approaches on foot with two bulging plastic bags of H Mart food. When she opens the door and sees the food, she is "happy."

But what I've seen in more than a decade of shopping in H Mart is an army of Korean and other Asian women -- but few men -- filing their carts with enormous quantities of  beef and other food and then loading up their minivans or SUVs to rush home and start preparing dinner.
 

H Mart, 112-130 Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee; 201-947-7800


http://www.hmart.com/