Fresh wild-caught shrimp join two canned cousins for dinner

I bought 1.5 pounds of Fresh Wild Gulf Shrimp from the beautiful seafood display at Whole Foods Market in Paramus, above and below. The fishmonger deveined them for me.

Whole Foods also had previously frozen Wild Gulf Shrimp for $18.99 a pound

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Wednesday, I need something to lift my spirits after the dismal results of the election the day before, and I found it in fresh wild shrimp.

At Whole Foods Market in Paramus, I splurged on 1.5 pounds of Gulf shrimp at $19.99 a pound (16-20 per pound), enough for four with a side dish of pasta.

That's pretty much what the Paramus ShopRite charges for large wild shrimp, and it's about $5 more a pound than Costco Wholesale's previously frozen farmed shrimp from Vietnam.

I served the Gulf shrimp with Whole Foods' organic whole wheat shells prepared in bottled pasta sauce with added extra-virgin olive oil, red wine, and canned anchovies and sardines.

Whole Foods has raised the price of a 1-pound box of the 365 Everyday Value pasta shells, which are imported from Italy, to $1.49 from $1.39, but they are still a bargain.

After sauteeing chopped garlic and sliced onion in olive oil, I added the shrimp, which were marinated in fresh lime juice, salt and other seasoning. I turned them once, and they cooked in about 5 minutes. They were crunchy and delicious.

I went shopping for naturally raised 2-pound rotisserie chickens while the fishmonger was deveining my shrimp at Whole Foods. At $7.50 per chicken when you buy two, these are a much better choice nutritionally than the bigger and cheaper low-quality birds sold at Costco and ShopRite.

The Paramus Whole Foods is trying a new fast-casual concept with bowls of Korean food, called "Bibimbap," the name of a popular comfort dish made in a stone bowl with rice, seasoned vegetables and ground meat, all topped with a fried or raw egg and eaten with a spicy sauce. What Whole Foods serves couldn't possibly compare to the bibimbap served in Korean restaurants in Fort Lee and Palisades Park.

Survive winter by taking comfort in hearty meals

On a chilly, rainy Friday, large bowls of takeout pork tofu soup warmed up the meat eaters in my family, but I was perfectly happy with the seafood version ($12.99 each with five side dishes).

Our takeout order from BCD Tofu House in Fort Lee included grilled galbi ($19.99), above, and five small, beautifully fried fish that were among the free side dishes, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The sun is shining on northern New Jersey today, but Friday was a complete washout and the forecast is for more snow next week.

We are winter weary here on the East Coast, having weathered six or seven storms with significant snowfall so far.

In between all the shoveling I've been doing, comfort food has been my port in the storm. 

The Haemul Pajun from BCD Tofu House was filled with seafood and scallions ($9.99 for small), but it was greasier and not as fluffy as other Korean pancakes I've tried, notably at Gammeeok in Fort Lee. Better were BCD's steamed pork dumplings ($6.99 for small).

When in Fort Lee

On Friday, I spent six hours at a surgery center in Fort Lee, where a family member was being treated for a broken leg, and on the way home in the car, we stopped at BCD Tofu House, 1640 Schlosser St., to pick up a warming dinner. 

I had called ahead, ran in and paid, then back out into the wind-whipped rain with nearly 20 containers in three large paper-in-plastic bags.

BCD Tofu House is one of the best Korean restaurants in North Jersey, but it is more expensive than Palisade Park's So Gong Dong, which my teenage son calls the "World's Best Tofu Restaurant."

Still, when he tasted the BCD pork tofu soup I emptied into a large bowl at home, he loved it, along with the barbecued galbi and steamed pork dumplings.

I ordered seafood tofu soup "very spicy" and found that all that red pepper burned my tongue, making it uncomfortable to eat. My son finished it later.

But I was very happy with the small fried fish, wonderful kimchi and other side dishes, and brown rice, which So Gong Dong doesn't serve.

When we go to a Korean restaurant for tofu soup, we are served a fresh egg to cook in the bubbling broth, but we didn't find any eggs in our soup from BCD Tofu House.

Crunchy broccoli is one of the free side dishes.

Sweet-and-spicy radish is a delightful side.

The cabbage kimchi from BCD Tofu House is among the best I've had.

A Jewish deli would be proud to serve these pickles.

Hearty home cooking

On Thursday night, I quickly whipped up 1 pound of organic whole-wheat pasta shells with bottled sauce, fresh garlic, and canned anchovies and sardines.

The shells are like catcher's mitts, holding the sauce and other ingredients.

The meal was complete with a glass of wine and a salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, adding in diced apple, blueberries, cinnamon-dusted almonds and Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, all dressed in extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

The made-in-Italy pasta came from Whole Foods Market in Paramus, and the rest of the ingredients were from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack and Fattal's in Paterson. 

I have been boiling and mashing sweet potatoes with Kabocha Squash, whole peeled cloves of garlic and extra-virgin olive oil as a bread substitute. Here, I served leftovers with an egg-white, sun-dried tomato and cheese omelet.

Two organic brown eggs sprinkled with shredded Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese (both from Costco Wholesale) make a great topping for bibimbap, a Korean dish I made at home with organic brown rice and seasoned vegetables from H Mart in Little Ferry.

Imported organic organic whole wheat shells from Whole Foods Market in Paramus are a bargain at $1.39 a pound. They are wonderful in bottled pasta sauce with added anchovies, sardines and chopped fresh garlic.

For a hearty breakfast, top the shells with a fried organic brown egg.

Problem checkout at ShopRite isn't my fault

On Wednesday morning, shoppers packed the ShopRite in Paramus in anticipation of today's snowstorm, but when the store computer didn't give me the sale price on 5.27 pounds of sweet potatoes, my checkout line came to a standstill.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss a slow checkout at the ShopRite in Paramus that was the store's fault, homemade dishes using ingredients from H Mart and Costco Wholesale, and a tasty version of tabbouleh from Costco.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Don't look at me, I told shoppers in my checkout line on Wednesday morning at the ShopRite in Paramus, where the clerk flipped on a flashing light to summon a supervisor.

In the produce department, I saw that the sweet potatoes I bought last week for 99 cents a pound were now 89 cents a pound, with an additional 20 cents off per pound, if I bought more than 5 pounds and used the store's Price Plus Club Card.

Last week, the checkout computer deducted the 20 cents per pound automatically, but on Wednesday morning, it didn't and I mentioned it to the clerk.

She flipped on the flashing light of her lane number to summon a supervisor, and I could see shoppers in line behind me react with rolling eyes.

On weekday mornings around 9 a.m., the Paramus ShopRite is fairly quiet, but on Wednesday, dire forecasts of another big snowstorm touched off panic food shopping.

Not much help

The supervisor came over, spoke with clerk, left and then returned, saying the promotional discount of 20 cents is only good, if I had purchased 5 pounds or more.

But I had.

To resolve the logjam, I suggested the clerk deduct $1 dollar from my order (5 pounds times 20 cents), and get the line moving.

First, she added $1, but I caught the error and the supervisor approved the deduction.

Finally, I was out of there with my sweet potatoes, lactose-free milk, apples, strawberries and Smart Balance spread.

Bibimbap is a rice-based Korean comfort dish that is known for being labor intensive. I made a meatless version with organic brown rice and an organic brown egg, above, with a lot of help from Jinga's Seasoned Vegetables, which I picked up at the H Mart in Little Ferry. The package includes a small cup of mildly spicy gochujang, a red pepper paste, but I added more from a container I had in the refrigerator.

I made four cups of organic brown rice in an electric cooker, but you can reduce the amount of rice, if your prefer a higher concentration of vegetables.

Korean bargains

At H Mart in Little Ferry on Monday, I picked up fresh, wild-caught whole whiting for $3.49 a pound, Kabocha Squash for 59 cents a pound and a 15-pound bag of California-grown Kokuho Yellow Label Rice for $8.99, a discount of $6.

We pan-fried the whiting, and served them with mashed Kabocha squash and sweet potatoes moistened with a few ounces of extra-virgin olive oil and seasoned with a little salt and Costco's Organic No-Salt Seasoning.

Everything but the za'atar thyme mixture and Aleppo pepper I used to season this frittata came from Costco Wholesale: Smoked wild salmon, shredded Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, Jarlsberg Reduced Fat Swiss Cheese, organic brown eggs and egg whites.

Another labor-intensive dish is tabbouleh, a Middle Eastern salad of cracked wheat mixed with finely chopped tomato, fresh parsley, onions and other ingredients. A version sold at Costco Wholesale is pleasantly tart.

The version sold at Costco is from Hannah International Foods in New Hampshire. The company drops a "b" and the "h," calling its product Taboule.



Vine Valley

Vine Valley was a Lebanese restaurant in Paterson that closed several years ago, but I'll never forget its tabbouleh, a tall, fluffy mound of finely chopped fresh parsley, tomato, onion and cracked wheat.

Hannah Taboule, sold at Costco Wholesale, is a tasty version.

A 21-ounce container of refrigerated tabbouleh was $5.49 at my Hackensack Costco.
 

Kimchi service makes this Fort Lee Korean restaurant a standout

At Gammeeok in Fort Lee, servers bring a tall bowl of cabbage and radish kimchi to your table, cut it, plate it and pour on extra sauce, which is both spicy and sweet, above and below.

The kimchi service -- unique to Gammeeok -- isn't the only reason to go there. The restaurant turns out terrific versions of such Korean classics as bibimbap and seafood pancakes.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The good news is that the kimchi at Gammeeok in Fort Lee is as good as ever -- an appealing combination of sweet, spicy and crunchy.

We had dinner there on Saturday night after an absence of more than a year, and Gammeeok is still our favorite place for bibimbap, a non-spicy dish that is true Korean comfort food.

I ordered another non-spicy dish, Seafood Joen, a  pancake with tender squid and shrimp that is fluffier than other versions I've tried ($14.95).

My teenage son ordered two entrees that could have fed three to four people, and finished everything, including a small bowl of white rice.

He loved the stone-bowl bibimbap ($13.95), as well as the grilled beef short ribs or Galbi ($22.95). 

The kimchi served here is so good it is available to go.

OB, a Korean beer, is $4.50.

Korean short ribs (galbi or kalbi) will delight meat-eaters ($22.95).

The seafood pancake is thick and fluffy, and includes tender squid, small whole shrimp and scallions, and comes with a dipping sauce ($14.95).

Stone-bowl bibimbap comes with a mildly spicy red-pepper paste (gochujang) that you spoon on top before your stir up ground meat, vegetables and rice ($13.95). We asked the kitchen to cook the egg, and you can have a bibimbap without meat.

A vinegary tangle of shredded radish is one of the complimentary side dishes.

Every table gets large, crunchy leaves of Nappa cabbage and fresh hot peppers, rear.

Valet parking is available at dinner, but you also can park on the street. No need to feed the meters after 6 p.m.

Details

Gammeeok, 485 Main St., Fort Lee; 201-242-1333. Open for lunch and dinner. No American Express  Cards. 

I used a coupon I found in The Record giving $10 off a $30 order, $15 off a $50 order and $20 off an $80 meal.

Web site: Good food, good service

The next night, I had three Korean specialties at home, all purchased from H Mart, 25 Lafayette Ave., Englewood: Jinga-brand translucent, yam-flour noodles called japchae, with vegetables and tofu, front (19 ounces for $5.99); stewed wild-caught Alaskan pollock, left rear (16 ounces for $16.99); and stewed tofu, right rear (11 ounces for $3.99).

Couldn't this place be a little more generous?

Spicy Kalbi Tang at Pine Hill Restaurant in Paramus.

The Korean restaurant serves grilled mackerel pike among the free side dishes.

Pine Hill Restaurant is the only Korean restaurant I know in Paramus -- which is the mall capital of North Jersey -- and it's far from the dozens of places that jockey for customers along Broad Avenue in Palisades Park.

Pine Hill also sets itself apart by serving at least 10 of the free side dishes that make a Korean meal so special.

But when four of us had dinner there on Saturday night, I began to wonder if serving more side dishes than most other Korean restaurants is enough.

Pine Hill has seen better days. Though clean, the interior was carried over from another restaurant, and hasn't ever been updated. 

The dinner menu lists a lot of sushi rolls and raw fish, but not that many entrees for non-meat eaters such as myself. 

No grilled fresh fish is available outside the mackerel pike in one of the side dishes.

Translucent Korean noodles are made from yam flour, not wheat.

After a waitress took our order, a tray was brought over and the small side dishes were arrayed on the table -- vegetables, fish and meat.

Pine Hill has some of the best cabbage kimchi around, both spicy and crunchy. The two mackerel pike were delicious.

Greens included fresh spinach. But the salad was iceberg, not the spring mix I've seen elsewhere. And slices of ham came with another cabbage side dish.

One of the complimentary side dishes or panchan.

A good Korean restaurant staff doesn't wait for the customer to ask for more panchan, but at Pine Hill our empty side dishes weren't replaced until I called over the waitress, who was chatting with other servers near the register.

I asked specifically for more kimchi and greens, but was disappointed we didn't get another set of the fatty mackerel pike.

For my entree, I ordered translucent noodles with vegetables called japchae, but asked the kitchen to hold the meat ($11.95).

A side dish of vegetable tempura.

The others had Stone-Bowl Bibimbap ($13.95), a rice, vegetable and ground-beef dish topped with a fried egg. A squeeze bottle of gochuhang, red-pepper paste, allows the diner to vary the spiciness.

The bibimbap came with a small bowl of soup, and an egg souffle in a stone bowl was brought for the table.

My teenage son asked for Spicy Kalbi Tang (also $13.95), a stew with beef short ribs, as hot as the kitchen could make it. It came with a small bowl of steamed white rice.

The food was good, and we had a filling dinner for about $16 each, including tip and tax.

But the relatively new Woochon Restaurant in Palisades Park serves as many side dishes, and they are of higher quality, so we might be going there the next time we want Korean food. 


Pine Hill Restaurant, 123 Paramus Road, 
Paramus; 201-843-0170. Open for lunch and dinner.

Woochon Restaurant, 280 Broad Ave., Palisades Park; 201-242-9999. Open for lunch and dinner.

 

How a trip for Costco Wholesale limes cost me $200

My basket at the end of an impromptu shopping trip to Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss an accidental shopping spree at Costco, sales policies at ShopRite and H Mart, and more ideas for meatless meals.

 

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

All I needed was limes, so I didn't even have a list when I dropped into Costco Wholesale last Friday.

But when I got to the checkout line, I had put $200 worth of items in my shopping basket, including two pairs of beautifully tailored wool pants from Italy ($49.99 each).

My clothes are too big now that I've lost weight, so they were an essential purchase.

As were two LED floodlights that are supposed to last more than 20 years ($25.99 each). I have four floodlights above my garage door that burn out frequently.

When I got to the Hackensack warehouse store, I remembered my teenage son asking for AA batteries, so I picked up a package of 48 from Kirkland Signature, the store brand ($12.99).

I also need something for Sunday dinner, so walked over to the seafood case, and found 5 pounds of Littleneck clams ($3.49 a pound).

I stopped buying those wonderful Sunset-brand Campari Tomatoes when the price for 2 pounds soared past $5, choosing Sunset beefsteaks that averaged $1.20 to $1.30 a pound.

But at $4.49, these tasty little orbs were impossible to resist.

And I was almost out of fruit, so picked up bananas (3 pounds for $1.39) and apricots (3 pounds for $5.99). 

A 5-pound bag of Persian Limes from Mexico were $4.99 -- perfect for broiled seafood, iced tea, canned fish salad and fruit salad.

Blueberries

Those sweet Jersey blueberries appeared in the market early this year and now, they've been almost totally supplanted by fruit from Michigan and Canada.

On a previous trip to Costco on July 31, I picked up a 2-pound package of fresh, sweet blueberries from Michigan for $6.49 (32 ounces).

This past Wednesday at Costco, I bought another 2-pound package of blueberries for $6.49 (32 ounces), but these are from Canada.

At the Paramus ShopRite on Wednesday, a pint of Canadian blueberries (12 ounces) was $2.99, and an 18-ounce package of Jersey blueberries was $5.99.

The day before at the same ShopRite, a pint of blueberries was $3.49.

Good luck trying to figure out when ShopRite and other supermarkets put food on sale.

Some of the prepared food available at H Mart in Fort Lee, made by the Korean supermarket or by such outside suppliers as Jinga and Pinocchio Catering.

Seasoned vegetables for bibimbap, left, and noodles without meat.

H Mart takeout

I went to the H Mart in Fort Lee on Wednesday to pick up prepared items for a Korean dinner at home, and found almost nothing on sale, compared to the Little Ferry H Mart, where I usually shop.

At checkout, the clerk said the Fort Lee store stopped giving customers a 10-cent credit for bringing in a reusable bag "last year," and claimed that was also the case in Little Ferry.

But he was wrong. My receipt from a visit to that store last Sunday, when I bought lobsters, shows I was given the 10-cent credit.

Lobsters at the Fort Lee store were $6.99 a pound, compared to the $4.49 a pound I paid on Sunday in Little Ferry. 

Rice, ramyun on sale

On that trip to the Little Ferry store, I also picked up two sale items:

A 15-pound bag of Kokuho Yellow Label rice grown in California for $7.99 or $7 off the regular price, and a 20-portion box of Shin Ramyun Gourmet Spicy instant noodle soup for $15.99 or about 80 cents a portion. 

At the Fort Lee H Mart, I bought Seasoned Vegetables for Bibimbap ($6.49), and Japchae, vermicelli noodles made from yam flour ($4.49).

I also picked up a small bunch of collard greens (99 cents a pound) and young carrots (99 cents).

A dinner of homemade bibimbap with carrots and collard greens.

Vermicelli noodles with a smoked wild salmon omelet for breakfast.

Bibimbap at home

To make the bibimbap, I prepared 2 cups of organic long-grain brown rice in an electric cooker and added the seasoned vegetables, sesame oil and gochujang, a Korean red-pepper paste.

Whole eggs, egg whites and milk went into the omelet.

I finished the open-face omelet under the broiler.

Frittata at home

I chopped up sweet red, orange, yellow and green peppers, removing parts that were beginning to spoil, and a little onion and Enoki mushroom, adding them to whole eggs and egg whites, milk and pieces of Reggiano Parmigiano cheese.

I poured the mixture into a 10-inch non-stick pan in which I had heated up a couple of ounces of olive oil, then added a layer of smoked wild salmon from Costco. 

After the omelet was set, I put it under the broiler.  The milk gave it a fluffy interior.

Blurring the line between meals

Breakfast without bread relies on organic brown rice bibimbap to give me a full feeling. In restaurants, bibimbap is usually served with a cooked or raw egg on top.

I've given up bread and pizza, but not foods that leave me satisfied and allow me to keep off the weight I've lost.

I often rely on 100% whole-wheat pasta from Trader Joe's and organic brown rice from Costco Wholesale -- and other dinner leftovers -- as substitutes for bread at breakfast.

My body seems to process whole-wheat pasta and brown rice better than their conventional counterparts or bread.

I miss pizza, but get the same gooey pleasure by adding sliced, reduced-fat cheese to omelets.

A gooey cheese-and-wild-lox omelet goes great with whole-wheat spirals.

Leftover sauteed cabbage and boiled squash add body to another cheesey omelet.

Stewed pollock, a prepared item from H Mart; smoked wild salmon and canned fish salad taste great for breakfast with tofu, radish kimchi and tomatoes in a za'atar thyme mixture.

I bought shredded vegetables from H Mart, and prepared a Korean comfort dish called bibimbap for dinner one night last week.

But I ate most of it at breakfast instead of bread (top photo).

For bibimbap, I made 2 cups of organic brown rice in an electric cooker, then added prepared vegetables from H Mart, a hot-pepper paste called gochujang and sesame oil.

H Mart Fresh in Fort Lee sells vegetables for bibimbap ($6.49).

This hot-pepper paste from Korea is one of the few without high fructose corn syrup.

H Mart Fresh (1379 16th St., Fort Lee; 201-944-9009) is the smallest of the Korean chain's stores in Bergen County, but it has a lot of prepared food and seafood, below.

H Mart Fresh draws shoppers from nearby high-rises. You see the word "fresh" repeated a number of times inside the store.

I did find a hot-pepper paste, called gochujang, made without high-fructose corn syrup or sugar (see photo). A 2.2-pound jar was $7.49.