Garlic lover's pasta, wild pesto salmon

Two full bulbs of California garlic -- at least a dozen and a half cloves -- go into a simple sauce for organic whole wheat spaghetti, above.

A second version of Garlic Lover's Pasta uses organic whole wheat fusilli and adds fresh organic baby spinach.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Garlic -- and lots of it -- chopped fresh or canned diced tomatoes, and extra-virgin olive oil are all you need to prepare a simple and satisfying sauce for pasta. 

You can add grated cheese to the pot as well as at the table for the finishing touch.

I use Trader Joe's organic whole-wheat pasta ($1.39 for 16 ounces). The California garlic and organic diced tomatoes come from Costco Wholesale.

For breakfast, I crowned Garlic Lover's whole wheat fusilli and spaghetti with an organic brown egg.

Wild for salmon

Another simple and simply delicious dish is wild salmon fillets that get a squirt of fresh lime juice and a pinch or two of Aleppo pepper before they go into the oven.

I roast salmon in a 375-degree oven for  8 to  12 minutes, depending on whether I want it rare for me or cooked through for other family members.

Once they come out of the oven, all you have to do is spoon on Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco Wholesale.

Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto is a refrigerated product that you can use at room temperature for wild salmon, above; or as a sandwich spread and pasta sauce.

Canned-fish salad -- pink salmon, yellowfin tuna and sardines -- is great in sandwiches, but when you're on a no-bread diet, you can pile it high for breakfast with organic spring mix, kimchi, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers. I dress the canned fish in Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice and ground cumin.

Why I cook in large batches. When dinner is as easy as plating and reheating leftover wild salmon with pesto and organic fusilli with garlic, tomato and spinach, followed by a salad, what's not to love?

Good food that won't clog arteries or add inches

A well-balanced meal of whole Spanish Mackerel, stir-fried asparagus and quinoa with Korean seasoned vegetables. The fish was poached in a sauce of organic diced tomatoes, red wine, Dijon mustard and non-fat Greek yogurt.

The fresh-fish display at H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Englewood, where the wild-caught, silvery Spanish Mackerel were $3.99 a pound on Thursday. Fresh-water carp was 99 cents a pound, but I would have had to buy the whole fish, which looked like it weighed 20 pounds or more.

Canned-fish salad (pink salmon, yellow-fin tuna and sardines) with Earthbound Farms Organic Spring Mix, Sunset-brand cucumbers and Italian olives.

I added a Gala Apple, above, and diced celery, garlic and onion to the canned-fish salad, along with Dijon mustard, ground cumin and fresh lime juice, all to taste.

The crusty, butter-free baguette from Balthazar Bakery in Englewood is still only $2. I slice and freeze it for sandwiches for other members of the family, but allow myself only the "heel" or end of the loaf with a big dinner salad.

Hemp is a legal variety of cannabis (marijuana) that is grown for fiber and seeds, such as the nutty tasting Hemp Hearts I found at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack last week, above with a salad and below. A 28-ounce bag was a pricey $14.89.

Manitoba Harvest raw, shelled hemp seeds are a product of Canada, vegan and made with 100% wind power, according to the bag, and are good for sprinkling on salads, cereal and yogurt.

Wild-caught haddock from Iceland coated with a Super Spice Mixture and served with brown rice and diced organic tomatoes prepared in an electric cooker. The spice mixture is made by combining every spice and dried herb I have in the house in a large plastic container, which I keep in the refrigerator.

Salted cod fish with whole-wheat fusilli pasta in bottled sauce, above, and with onion, sweet pepper, tomato and ackee, a Jamaican fruit available in cans, below.

All of the canned, fresh and salted fish I used in these home-cooked meals came from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack or H Mart, a Korean supermarket in Englewood.

H Mart also sells 16 ounces of seasoned vegetables for bibimbap, a rice-based comfort dish, but I used them with organic quinoa and didn't add the usual ground beef (Jinga Seasoned Vegetables, $7.69).

The best 100% whole-wheat pasta I've found comes from Trader Joe's, where it is only $1.39 for a full pound and organic, too.

Organic diced tomatoes, organic brown rice, organic quinoa and Earthbound Farms Organic Spring Mix are available at Costco Wholesale. 

Imported canned ackee in brine is available at ShopRite in Rochelle Park and Hackensack Market on Passaic Street. 

 

Spicing up a trip to the Great Falls

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There was even more water at the Great Falls today than in this March 2010 photo.

There's usually only one place I want to be after a major storm soaks and floods North Jersey -- and that's the Great Falls on the Passaic River in Paterson.


But the Silk City has other attractions, including Middle Eastern markets, bakeries and restaurants, and a large Farmer's Market in its south end.


On Monday, I drove to Paterson and stopped first at Fattal's Syrian Bakery at 975-77 Main St. The street has been repaved through South Paterson, to the delight of drivers.


I picked up a pound of crushed Aleppo red pepper, which I use to spice up fried eggs, omelets, fish and hummus. At $6.99 a pound, it is almost twice the price of a few years ago.


Two pounds of pitted dates from Algeria were $4.99. Fragrant ground cumin was $4.99 a pound. Cans of Libano Verde-brand hummus from Lebanon were 99 cents each, and need only extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice and garlic powder to turn into a dip.


A gallon of Merve Ayran yogurt drink was $7.79.


In early afternoon, police blocked access to the parking lots at the falls, which were swollen by Tropical Storm Irene's 8-plus inches of rain over the weekend.


But I managed to leave my car in a restaurant lot nearby and visit both the overlook and the main viewing area below.


The river was already spilling over Spruce Street. 


The dark-brown, silt-filled water threw up a spray and created a rainbow over the falls. Beautiful.


More food shopping


This morning, the street to my gym in Hackensack was covered by flood water, so I turned around and drove to Costco Wholesale a couple of miles away. It's always a pleasure shopping there after the doors first open just before 10 a.m.


I picked up fresh wild-caught sockeye salmon fillet from the U.S.A. at $8.99 a pound; 6 pounds of white-flesh peaches for $7.99; 1 pound of Earthbound Farm organic spring mix at $4.99; 2 pounds of hothouse-grown Roma tomatoes for $3.29; and 1 pound of organic spinach for $3.99. 

When life gives you parsley ...

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I don't know why parsley keeps on growing in the boxes on my deck, despite temperatures that have dipped into the 30s overnight. But it's a nice, fresh addition to ingredients I buy for home-cooked meals.

Last week, I made a tabbouleh salad with flat-leaf parsley. On Monday, I made a frittata with lots of flat-leaf and curly parsley. This is what you'll need:

• About two cups or more of chopped parsley.
• Five eggs or the equivalent in egg whites.
• Extra-virgin olive oil.
• Salt, allspice and cumin to taste.

I mixed the chopped parsley and raw eggs with a little low-fat milk, and seasoned them with salt, allspice and cumin. I poured the mixture into a 10-inch, non-stick pan that I had heated up over medium heat with enough olive oil to coat the bottom.

When the bottom was set, I put the pan under the broiler for about 10 minutes, but I would suggest you watch it until the top sets. My frittata was runny, so next time I would cook it longer on the stove before moving it to the oven. 

I also added chunks of Swiss cheese to the egg mixture and, after I poured it into the pan, I put about 10 sun-dried tomatoes on top. I might make it without these additions next time or just use some cheese to give the frittata a little creaminess. 

My mother used to make small parsley or ground-meat omelets, fried in oil, to eat in pocket bread (each omelet contained about two tablespoons of egg mixture). 

In the summer, a sandwich of the small meat omelet, called egge (pronounced edge-eh), tasted especially good with a fat slice of Jersey beefsteak tomato.

At Ima Restaurant in Teaneck

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Ima is the Hebrew word for mother, but the food served at the kosher Teaneck restaurant pales in comparison to the dishes turned out by my Sephardic Jewish mother, who was born in Aleppo, Syria.


The cook at this restaurant is the daughter of the woman who opened the original Ima in Israel, featuring recipes from the family kitchen in Mosul, Iraq. Iraq and Syria share a border, but, judging from the food I ate at Teaneck's Ima, not the spices that set Grace Sasson's food apart.

This is also a kosher restaurant, which means it's expensive. I can understand why dishes with kosher meat are more expensive than non-kosher meat dishes at other restaurants. But why are dishes without meat so expensive?

I wanted to try one of Ima's signature items -- kibbeh -- which is a fried bulgur-wheat casing containing vegetables, but only the meat version was available Sunday evening. Instead, I ordered a red pepper stuffed with rice ($6), a bowl of tomato soup with white beans ($6) and an Israeli salad of chopped tomatoes and cucumbers that serves two ($8). Hummus was listed at $9.

The food was good, but bland. I couldn't taste any cumin, allspice or tamarind sauce, just three of the ways my mother seasoned her home-cooked dishes.

The restaurant is simply decorated and seats about 20. During my visit Sunday evening, I saw at least three, large Israeli families with noisy children eating there. 

After I ordered, I received a small bowl of pickled vegetables and a single, doughy, partially burned pocket bread. I asked for a second bread during my meal. I drank water, because there was no seltzer.

Ima is about a mile from my home, and I was hoping it was a place where I could experience the flavors of my mother's kitchen, but I'll have to continue driving to Paterson for the real thing.

Ima Restaurant, 445 Cedar Lane, Teaneck; 201-357-5789. 
Closed Friday at 4 p.m. during the summer, and all day Saturday.
 

A recipe overheard at the gym

Image by chrismar via Flickr

 
I overheard two women at the gym discussing what they had served for dinner, and one mentioned a salsa that sounded intriguing. When I asked the women what kind of chicken they served their families, one said organic and the other said Perdue. 


The woman who serves organic chicken recommended a salsa made with tomatillos (photo) and watermelon, seasoned with cumin. That's all I remember, even though I asked her to repeat the recipe a couple of days later.


At Corrado's in Clifton, the tomatillos were rotten, but I found some nice ones at Compare Foods in Passaic. They also are available at Hackensack Market on Passaic Street in Hackensack. They are small, green tomatoes that come in a husk. The taste is unusual and pleasantly sour.


I chopped up four tomatillos (without the husk, stem or stem base) and a thick, half-slice of a large, seedless watermelon. I added two or three nice pinches of ground cumin, some fresh lemon juice, a little chopped jalapeno pepper without seeds, and chopped cilantro from the garden. I guess you could add ripe tomato or onion or both.



I had some with breakfast this morning, alongside my sardine, tomato and cheese sandwich. Wonderful. This salsa would be great with fish, too.

Shopping notes

Image by wka via Flickr

Rotten tomatillos, tired-looking red peppers and squid-ink pasta for about $12 a pound. You may be surprised that I found all of those at Corrado's, the large ethnic supermarket on the Clifton-Paterson border that has a reputation for low prices. 

I had an errand in Totowa, and decided to stop in Paterson to pick up Middle Eastern spices and bread at Fattal's Bakery. I also needed grated pecorino romano cheese, which Corrado's sells for $6.99 a pound. I keep it in the freezer, and use it on pasta and to sprinkle over salads and focaccia.


Corrado's is one of the few supermarkets I know that stocks squid-ink pasta, but today, the only package I found was 8.8 ounces and cost $5.99. I passed. One side of an entire aisle is devoted to pasta, including 24-inch long spaghetti from Italy.

I picked up two plastic bags of grated cheese, each one about a pound. Five pounds of carrots were $1.99, and jalapeno peppers were 2 pounds for $1. But I'll have to go elsewhere for tomatillos. Corrado's still has low prices, but in some cases, the quality is low, too. You get nothing back for bringing your own bags.


At Fattal's, I picked up two packages of Syrian bread ($1.50 for 12 loaves); a variety of green and black olives ($2.99 a pound), Aryan yogurt drink ($3.79) and a half-pound each of cumin and coarse Aleppo red pepper ($3.96 a pound).


The cumin and mildly spicy red pepper are my main spices for seasoning several dishes, including wild salmon, eggs and hummus.

I didn't need sardines on this visit to Fattal's, but noted Corrado's charges $1.49 for the same Moroccan sardines you can get at the bakery for 99 cents.

Fattal's Bakery, 975-77 Main St., 
Paterson; 973-742-7125.
  
Corrado's  Family Affair, 1578 Main Ave., 
Clifton; 973-340-0628.

Turn your back on refrigerated hummus

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If you love hummus, read this New York Times story (link below), then go out and buy canned hummus from Lebanon and make your own with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic powder. With all the money you'll save, you can buy some fresh Syrian bread to scoop up your tasty, homemade dip.


I buy my canned hummus at Fattal's Syrian Bakery in Paterson (975-77 Main St.), a one-stop shopping experience for fresh bread and everything you'd want to eat with it. Lebano Verde is the brand I favor, and a 15-ounce can was 99 cents the last time I was there 10 days ago. 

I garnish my hummus with more olive oil and cumin or Aleppo red pepper, and use it as a sandwich spread when I'm not scooping it up with bread. Here is the link to the story:

 Hummus with peanut butter?

(Photo: Hummus served in Haifa, Israel)

More meat-free meals

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Fish and seafood have been our salvation during the meatless regimen we have been following for nearly two weeks.

This morning, I made a canned fish salad with yellowfin tuna (photo), sardines, chopped red onion, Dijon mustard, cumin and lemon juice, and put it on a sandwich spread with pesto. For dinner last night, we had flounder fillets in Mexican red sauce, black beans and yellow rice.

The Pasta Prima-brand lobster ravioli from Costco we prepared Wednesday evening were delicious with salad and wine.

On Friday, during an unscheduled visit to the Hackensack Costco, I found spinach patties and saw but didn't buy wild-salmon patties. (I have an unopened bag of sockeye salmon fillets from Alasaka in my freezer.)

How about this for dinner? Heat a spinach patty with thin-sliced Swiss cheese, top it with a salmon patty with same or different melted cheese, and spoon light tomato sauce over them.

Spicing up our breakfast

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"That was a great breakfast," my 12-year-old son said as he got up from the table today after polishing off two pocket-bread halves stuffed with organic greens, hummus and fava beans. (Photo: Hummus at Maxim Restaurant in Haifa, Israel.)

My breakfast sandwiches also held greens and hummus, but I added a fat Moroccan sardine and a slice or two of plum tomato sprinkled with the thyme-based mixture called za'atar. We both ate some taboule salad, the last from the container I bought at Costco in Hackensack. Everything else but the greens came from Fattal's Bakery (and market) in Paterson.

This breakfast was fragrant with Middle eastern spices -- cumin, coarse Aleppo red pepper, allspice -- and lemon, garlic and extra-virgin olive oil in the hummus with tahini I made from a can (Lebano Verde brand).

As we ate, we discussed how my son's bean, bean and bread sandwich made such a great vegetarian meal and how I would be happy giving up meat as long as I could eat sardines and other seafood. After I finished, I put another half of Fattal's Syrian bread into the toaster to warm and assembled a hummus and fava bean sandwich. Absolutely wonderful.

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

Paterson; open seven days.

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.

Shopping, cooking and tasting notes

Have you seen these Stop & Shop TV commercials where a woman learns to make pizza at home to save money and invites friends over for dinner? I don't want to learn how to make pizza, but I was interested in mention of  $4.88 for 5 pounds of clementines with a store card -- the lowest price I've seen.

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I visit Stop & Shop about once a month to look over its Nature's Promise offerings that are found throughout the store. These are naturally raised or grown items such as poultry, meat, eggs, milk, organic lemonade and so forth. Yesterday, I went to the Teaneck store for the clementines and to pick up a few things I needed to serve the delightful Syrian meat sandwiches called arayes, which we've enjoyed at Aleppo Restaurant in Paterson. (My spelling of arayes is just a guess.)

The box of clementines looked to be identical to those from Spain, but this one was from Morocco. Still, you can't beat the price (reduced from $7.99) and they turned out to be sweet, though harder to peel than their Spanish counterparts. I weighed the box and fruit  in the store and they totaled 5.32 pounds.

For the arayes, I needed parsley (99 cents for a big bunch, most of which will go to waste) and some Nature's Promise ground beef to add to the naturally raised ground lamb I bought the day before at Whole Foods in Paramus. I also picked up Nature's Promise large brown eggs ($2.99 a dozen) and organic, low-fat milk ($3.69).

Chuck, one of my loyal readers, advised me to use a lot of chopped parsley for the arayes meat, which totaled about a pound and a quarter. I also seasoned the lamb-beef mixture with salt, sumac, allspice, cumin and Aleppo red pepper, and added finely chopped onion and red pepper before hand mixing it.

I split two medium-size pocket breads from Fattal's Bakery in Paterson, spreading and pressing the meat as thinly as possible into each of the four halves. I put them under the broiler until the meat was firm and sizzling, then reunited the halves and cut each sandwich into four quarters. (I made lamb burgers with the rest of the meat and put them into the freezer.)

They were yummy and tasted pretty close to what we've had in restaurants. I served the arayes last night with lamb sausage from Fattal's, yellow rice, canned fava beans with my added tahini sauce and salad.

Image via Wikipedia

This morning, I fried one Nature's Promise large brown egg -- sunny side up -- in extra-virgin olive oil, seasoning it with a little salt and a generous pinch of Aleppo red pepper. I toasted one large and one small roll, and ate the egg with this and that -- a slice of Swiss cheese, some tuna-red salmon-sardine salad, wild lox, kimchi and seasoned tofu. Life is good. We've been eating only egg whites for far too long.

Cleopatra's tuna-sardine salad

The Citadel in Aleppo, Syria, which has given us a spicy red pepper.

My tuna salad with a twist took a new turn today when I added pickled lemon, diced, in addition to the usual olive oil, cumin and chopped red onion.

I started with two cans of Kirkland-brand albacore tuna in water from Costco and three cans of skinless and boneless Moroccan Al-Shark sardines in oil from Fattal's in Paterson, all undrained. 

Then I added extra-virgin olive oil, cumin and chopped red onion to taste. Aleppo pepper, a coarse, mildly spicy red pepper you'll also find at Fattal's, wouldn't be out of place here.

The Cleopatra-brand pickled lemons from Egypt (Fattal's) are small and salty. So I diced three and added them and lemon juice to the canned fish, again to taste. 

I put hummus and organic spring mix in warm pita halves (Fattal's), spooned in the fish salad and added sliced plum tomato sprinkled with thyme-based za'atar mix. 

I ate kimchi and olives on the side, and washed it all down with my own mint iced tea.

Way better than tuna salad

I don't think I can top the wild salmon-wild smoked salmon sandwich I had for breakfast three days last week, but I'm happy with the no-mayo canned fish salad that has succeeded it.

I combined cans of yellowfin tuna from Italy (Costco), fat smoked sardines from Morocco (Fattal's) and Alaskan red salmon (ShopRite), including the oil or water in each. I then diced about two-thirds of a medium red onion, adding it along with two or three tablespoons of powdered cumin and Aleppo red pepper to taste. Finally, I moistened it with two or three ounces of extra-virgin olive oil. This made four cups of fish salad -- enough for about 10-12 sandwiches.

I toasted some Italian semolina bread from Newark, spread on hummus and added salad greens. Then came lots of the fish salad, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese shavings and tomato slices with za'atar spice mixture. My side dish was kimchi, my drink iced tea.