No-recipe home cooking in photos

Breakfast salad: Organic spring mix with beefsteak tomato, za'atar thyme mixture, and reduced fat cheese; cabbage kimchi, olives and canned-fish salad (yellowfin tuna, pink salmon and sardines).

Small mustard greens with a bottle of Mexican green salsa.

Mustard greens plated with half of a mahi-mahi fillet cooked in spicy green salsa or salsa verde and a sweet potato made in 6 minutes in a microwave (speed-cook setting).

An egg-white omelet with reduced-fat cheese, white anchovies and coarsely ground Aleppo pepper plated with leftover sugar pea shoots.

Fresh greens


I cook greens, fresh broccoli and French green beans the same way, and they are ready in under 5 minutes.


First, cut and wash your greens, then blanch in a covered pot with boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes.


Using the cover, drain the pot and put it back on the stove with no flame under it.


You can drizzle the greens with extra-virgin olive oil, sprinkle on a little salt and add seasonings such as powdered garlic and black pepper.


Or, you can add a little soy sauce and sesame oil, and no-salt organic seasoning. You're done.


Fish in green sauce


Pour half of a bottle of spicy Mexican salsa verde into a large, non-stick pot and warm it up. Add any kind of wild-caught fish fillets, including frozen mahi-mahi or Alaskan salmon.


Pour the rest of the sauce over the fish and squeeze the juice of one or two limes into the pot. Cover and cook for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on whether the fish is fresh of frozen.


You also can cook a whole fish this way. Slash each side in three places with a sharp knife to help you judge when the fish is done.


You can serve fish in green sauce with a sweet potato, organic brown rice with lentils, made in an electric rice cooker; or whole-wheat pasta with bottled sauce.


I reserve the green sauce for use with omelets or eggs fried sunny side up.


Canned fish salad


Empty canned fish and oil or water into a plastic container, add chopped celery or sweet pepper and then flavor with Dijon mustard, fresh lime or lemon juice and powdered cumin to taste.


Cover and refrigerate.


Sources


H Mart or other Asian supermarkets are great sources for a wide variety of fresh greens, including spinach, collard, mustard, bok choy and Chinese broccoli.


Costco Wholesale usually has fresh wild-caught haddock, flounder and Pacific cod, but when it doesn't, I buy frozen mahi-mahi or salmon in the freezer section.


Costco also sells Kirkland Signature Organic No Salt Seasoning, a blend of 21 spices and other ingredients.


ShopRite and Hackensack Market carry Mexican green salsa from Goya and La Costena. A 16-ounce bottle is enough to prepare as much as 2 pounds of fish.

Related article

• Costco's food and prices are the best revenge

The fattiest fish is the best fish

Whole sea bass, okra and other vegetables, cooked with sake and lime juice.

We need Omega-3 fatty acids to make our bodies work properly, and there is no more delicious source than wild-caught fish, including salmon and cod.


But you don't have to buy the most expensive fish to get the heart-healthy benefits of Omega-3s, according to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.


A seafood nutrition chart shows a 3.5-ounce portion of fresh or smoked black cod, also called sable fish, contains 1,800 milligrams of Omega-3s, but they are among the priciest selections on a menu or in the market.


You can get 500 milligrams of Omega-3s from the same portion of sole, 470 mg from Alaska pollock  and 450 mg from rockfish.


Pacific oysters


Among shellfish, a 3.5-ounce portion of Pacific oysters contains 1,400 mg of Omega-3s.


In January, I ordered black cod at Maritime Parc, an expensive seafood restaurant in Jersey City, but we enjoy Alaska pollock at home at least once a week.


This past Sunday, I found Pacific rockfish on sale at Whole Foods in Paramus for $8.99 a pound (40% off) and bought it to add variety to the wild-caught fillets I usually buy at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack -- Pacific True Cod, haddock and sole.


Pearly white rockfish


We fried some of the rockfish, and coated the rest in a mixture of bread crumbs and chili spices. 


The fillets on ice were reddish, but they turned pearly white in the oven and broke into big flakes when we ate them.


For breakfast this morning, I enjoyed leftover rockfish and  brown rice with cabbage and saltfish (salted pollock) my wife made for dinner last night.

This fatty sashimi comes from a farmed fish and costs $79.99 a pound.

Alaska King or Chinook salmon -- usually the most expensive kind -- provides 1,700 mg of Omega-3s, but you can get 1,200 mg from the same portion of Sockeye and 1,100 from Coho salmon.


A 3.5-ounce portion of Alaska Pink salmon provides 1,300 mg of Omega-3s, but I've never seen fresh or frozen fillets of this fish in New Jersey.


A can of Pink salmon provides 1,100 mg of Omega-3s, compared to 1,400 from a can of much more expensive Sockeye or Red salmon.


Sustainable seafood


Alaska says it is a major source of sustainable seafood -- seafood that is managed and fished using practices that ensure there will always be more to catch in the future.


It's a commitment that dates to 1959, "when Alaskans wrote sustainability into their [state] Constitution," according to the marketing institute.


Canned-fish salad


I buy canned Pink salmon at Costco in Hackensack, and mix it with canned yellow-fin tuna and sardines, plus diced celery, sweet pepper or onion, for a fish salad flavored with Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice and powdered cumin.


Costco also sells frozen Alaska Sockeye salmon fillets, smoked and sliced Sockeye salmon, and salted pollock fillets, which usually are boiled to reduce the salt content before the fish is used in cooking.


Boycott bluefin tuna


Last Saturday, during a visit to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, I stopped at the refrigerated fish case and stared at the veins of fat in a small piece of raw oh-toro -- the prized belly meat from the endangered giant bluefin tuna.


The price: $79.99 a pound. And this piece came from a farmed bluefin raised in Spain. 


I'm boycotting bluefin tuna, which is high in harmful mercury and which has been driven to the brink of extinction by the Japanese.


I'd rather get my Omega-3s elsewhere.


More information about Alaska seafood is available at the following link: Wild, Natural & Sustainable


Everything you want to know about Omega-3s is at the following WebMD link: The ABCs of Omega-3s

I brake for fish -- not bread

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Brussels sprouts are a frequent side dish to the fish, chicken, veal and pork in Jerry's Meals To Go. They are a low $7.99.

As I drove past Balthazar Bakery in Englewood the other day -- without lifting my foot off the accelerator -- I reviewed how drastically my diet has changed, and the benefits I've received.


When Balthazar opened a retail store in its production bakery just before Thanksgiving in 2002, I lived around the corner.


I'd walk over to pick up a wonderfully crusty baguette or a dozen dinner rolls and, once in a blue moon, an extraordinary fruit tart.


Even after I moved to Hackensack, Balthazar remained my main source for bread, and I'd stop in every couple of weeks to stock my freezer with dinner rolls and cut-up baguette for sandwiches.


I supplemented that with pocket bread, za'atar bread and spinach pies from the Syrian bakeries in Paterson -- I always had them in my freezer or refrigerator. 


But I gave up bread more than a year ago to lose weight, so on Monday, I kept on driving until I reached Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood, where I bought a $7.99 Meal To Go -- a multi-course, restaurant-quality dinner.


And because this month marks the 2nd anniversary since I stopped eating meat and poultry, I bought a Jerry's meal with blackened fillet of sole, rather than one with pork, chicken or veal.


The side dishes were a half-dozen grilled shrimp in the shell, Brussels sprouts, vegetable frittata and a small block of macaroni and cheese. All I needed to complete my dinner was a home-made salad and a glass of wine.


The next night, I prepared green-shell mussels from New Zealand I had purchased at H Mart -- they are blanched on the half shell and frozen. I sprinkled on some grated cheese and dried herbs and baked them in the oven for about 20 minutes.


Tonight, we're having fresh wild-caught haddock fillets from Iceland that I picked up today at Costco Wholesale ($7.99 a pound).


I went to Costco after meeting friends for lunch at the Grant Street Cafe in Dumont. I had a Greek salad and black coffee, and they had sandwiches or an omelet with lots of bread and french fries.


At Costco, I also purchased 4 pounds of frozen, cleaned U-15 farmed shrimp from Vietnam (13 to 15 shrimp to the pound) for $36.99 or about $9.25 a pound with a $5 instant Costco coupon.


By giving up bread and meat, and going to the gym five days a week, I've lost a lot of weight. I weigh 190 pounds, compared to a high of 228, and my cholesterol is around 140 -- much lower than before, when I ate meat and took a cholesterol-lowering pill.. 


Balthazar Bakery, 214 S. Dean St., Englewood; 201-503-9717.


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


Costco Wholesale, 80 S. River St., Hackensack; 201- 487-5471.

Going in search of fresh local seafood along the New Jersey Shore

Image by mcamcamca via Flickr
A fishing boat.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Garden State is also the Fishing State, with several working ports -- from Belford on Raritan Bay all the way down to Barnegat Light on the Atlantic Ocean.

So, on Saturday, we set off in search of fresh local seafood for lunch, but met with only limited success.

Four of us had a big meal at The Fishery in South Amboy -- fried smelts, steamed Littleneck clams in a scrumptious broth, fried whiting, meaty broiled haddock, large crab cakes and even soft-shell crabs.

I'm not sure how much of it was brought in by New Jersey boats (In 2016, The Fishery was closed).

Pirate's Cove

We had hoped to eat at Pirate's Cove, a restaurant operated by the Belford Seafood Co-op on Raritan Bay, but it was closed for the winter, as I learned when I called the attached retail market.

Fishermen who belong to the co-op catch fluke, porgy and many other kinds of fish in the Atlantic Ocean, and sell much of it wholesale to the Fulton Fish Market and elsewhere along the East Coast.

After lunch, we drove down to the Belford Co-op Fish Market, which is in the same long, low shed as the restaurant, but when I walked in, no one was on duty at the counter. 

However, I could hear someone working in another part of the building.

I saw whole clams and oysters in the fish case along with three kinds of fish fillets, all unlabeled. Some of the fillets were in a metal tray with water (maybe melted ice), which I thought odd.

There was a fishy smell to the place, though it wasn't strong.

On a board on a wall, more than a dozen kinds of fish were listed at prices you don't see in North Jersey fish markets. Many were listed at $2 a pound. Fluke, a terrific fish often eaten raw as sashimi, was listed at $2 to $4 a pound.

I left without buying anything.

I found the history of fishing in Belford at the following link: History of Belford

Belford was officially established in 1891 when a rail station was built here, separating from Port Monmouth (Township of Middletown).

 A menhaden processing plant was built in Belford in the late 1800s, which operated until 1982 (Jones 2004); this was once the town’s largest employer (Township of Middletown).

The presence and stench of the menhaden plant helped maintain Belford as a relatively unchanged fishing port while the rest of the shore around it was subject to intense development and tourism.  Belford has notoriously been home to pirates, blockaders, rum runners, and even through the 1980s, fish poachers.

There is a long tradition among some Belford fishermen of not obeying fisheries regulations (Jones 2004).  Some consider Belford to be the longest continuously operating fishing village on the East Coast.

The Fishery

Earlier, at The Fishery, we ordered way too much and ran up the bill to $100 for four, not including the tip.

The restaurant is basically a seafood shack on a forlorn stretch of Route 35 littered with shuttered businesses. 

There's seating for under 20 people, plus a counter, seafood cases, walls covered with white tiles and a more-or-less open kitchen in back.

We parked behind the small building, near a 5-foot-high bush of rosemary. The energetic young woman behind the counter is the lone server. Basic silverware comes wrapped in small, paper napkins.  

For some reason, the friendly Greek owner charges more for broiled or sauteed fish than for fried, so my wife's two large crab cakes were $18.95 with two sides, compared to $15.95 fried. Still, she complained they tasted "greasy" or oily.

My son wanted soft-shell crabs, which I didn't think were in season, and he wanted them fried with french fries ($19.95). 

My mother-in-law's fried whiting platter had three fish for $12.95.

I saw haddock fillet on ice, so ordered simply broiled haddock with fresh, sauteed spinach and a naked baked potato, a balanced and filling meal for $15.95.

We loved one of our appetizers: a half-pound of headless, fried ocean smelts, which are smaller than sardines but larger than anchovies. We ate them whole, sprinkled with lemon juice or dipped in a spicy red sauce or tartar sauce.

A smelt dinner was listed on a blackboard for $12.95, but I'm not sure how much we were charged for a half pound.

Our other appetizer: a dozen Littleneck clams ($9.95), which came with garlic toast. I ate the pleasantly salty broth with fresh tomato as a soup course. 

Three of us also ordered cups of The Fishery's Manhattan Clam Chowder ($2.50) and Maine Lobster, Clam and Corn Chowder ($3.95).

The Fishery, 1812 Route 35 north, South Amboy; 
732-721-9100. BYO. Closed Mondays.

Belford Seafood Co-op, 901 Port Monmouth Road, Middletown; 732-787-6508 (retail market).

Wild salmon price eases further

Image by swanksalot via Flickr

I picked up some fresh wild-caught haddock from Iceland (not Canada, as I wrote previously) at Costco in Hackensack on Wednesday, and noticed that the price for fresh, wild sockeye salmon fillets has eased further -- to $9.99 a pound. The salmon is from the U.S., but the label doesn't specify which state.

In June, Costco offered wild sockeye from the famed Copper River in Alaska for $14.99 a pound and then $11.99 a pound. It also offered wild king salmon from Alaska for $14.99 a pound.


As I shopped in Costco, my doctor's comment that I eat too much came to mind, and I'm wondering if the large quantities I have to buy at the warehouse store contribute to my overeating. The smallest package of wild-caught haddock I could find was 1.36 pounds, when I would have preferred a pound. Most fruit at Costco is sold in three-pound, four-pound and larger sizes.


I'm planning to bread the fish in chili spices, bake it and serve it with bowtie pasta in tomato sauce and steamed French green beans. Of course, any leftover fish would make good fish tacos or sandwiches.

(Photo: Fish market display of Copper River salmon)

More shopping notes

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I stopped at Costco in Hackensack to buy Earthbound Farms organic salad mix today ($4.49 for one pound), and was impressed by all the fresh, wild-caught fish fillets available.

There was wild ahi tuna from Micronesia, haddock from Canada, Pacific cod from the U.S. and flounder (from I'm not sure where). I bought the cod for $5.99 a pound, and we'll fry it up for dinner. Leftovers will make quick fish tacos.


'Cheap' wine


One of the comments I received on the ridiculous mail-in rebate for Turning Leaf wine (see Wednesday's post) claims it "served me right" for buying cheap wine. Of course, the comment was anonymous, and I rejected it.


If this person wants to spend $50 or more on a bottle of wine from a first-growth chateau in France, be my guest. But please stay out of my business.


I've purchased hundreds of bottles of wine for $5 to $10 that have been perfectly drinkable, and I'll continue to do so. Today, next to Costco, I bought a bottle of California cabernet sauvignon for $4.49, and I'm looking forward to drinking it. (Photo: Cabernet grapes.)



I'll be sure to toast the commentator's ignorance.

Monotony is setting in

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My 12-year-old son was the first to use the word "monotony" to describe the meatless, fish-heavy meals we have been preparing at home for the past two weeks. Today, that word echoed in my head as I made my weekly trip to Costco in search of more variety.

I picked up Boca-brand soy burgers and frozen Maryland crab cakes at the Hackensack store, but passed on frozen mahi-mahi fillets and frozen Icelandic fish and chips, because I still have lots of frozen Pacific flounder and frozen Alaskan sockeye salmon, which I steamed in an Asian sauce and served with instant mashed potatoes and salad last night.

I walked warily past the Australian lamb I used to love to see what was in the fresh fish case, and startled a woman with a warning about the farmed salmon she was looking at. Damn. No fresh, wild-caught haddock, thick, meaty fillets that would be great fried -- my son's favorite preparation.

So, it looks like Maryland crab cakes (without the garnish shown in the photo above) and lots of frozen vegetables for dinner tonight. I'm not proud. If you have an idea for a meatless dinner, please pass it along.

In search of more meatless meals

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I made my weekly run to Costco in Hackensack today with the goal of  bolstering our meatless dinner choices, and came home with three different wild-caught fish and some wonderful-looking lobster ravioli.

I picked up a tray of fresh haddock fillets from Iceland at $7.49 a pound, frozen sockeye salmon fillets from Alaska ($25.89 for three pounds) and an item I hadn't seen before -- frozen Pacific flounder fillets ($8.69 for two pounds).

The lobster ravioli should provide two meals ($11.99). I looked at the ingredients, and Atlantic lobster is listed second, right after the flour to make the pasta.

At Balthazar Bakery later in the day, I bought a double baguette and hit the jackpot -- it was about 10 inches to 12 inches longer than usual, but the $4 price was the same. When I got it home, my wife, son and I stood around cutting off pieces and eating them with thin-sliced Swiss cheese.

For dinner tonight, I cooked the haddock in Mexican green salsa and opened a can of organic pinto beans from Whole Food Market, heating them in a small pot and adding non-salt seasoning and black pepper. We ate the fish, salsa and beans over steamed white rice with a salad.

Tomorow night, I plan to serve veggie patties with cheese, lettuce and tomato on onion-potato rolls from Balthazar. On Wednesday, we'll try the lobster ravioli in tomato sauce.


And it looks like our one meal out Saturday night will be at our favorite soft-tofu stew restaurant in Palisades Park. If we make it to Sunday, it will mark two weeks without meat (chicken, pork, beef or lamb).

Breakfasts have been easy. I've had eggs with Colombian corn cakes (arepas), hot oat meal with dried blueberries or a sandwich of wild smoked salmon with kimchi on the side. I've been trying to skip lunches, relying on black coffee or home-brewed espresso and crackers and cheese or fruit.

Shopping and tasting notes

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Say hello to haddock

I never know what I'll find in the seafood cases at Costco in Hackensack, where I shop weekly on Mondays or Tuesdays. Tonight, my wife coated thick, meaty wild-caught haddock fillets from Canada in Indian spices and flour, and fried them. Me and my son loved them. (Photo: haddock.)

On Tuesday, I first looked at and rejected lobster tails that had been treated with a preservative ($16.99 a pound). I also walked past the many trays of artificially colored farmed salmon and found the haddock among trays of wild-caught flounder (from Canada or Iceland). I bought a pound and a half or so of haddock at $7.49 a pound.

I also picked up a pound of preservative-free smoked wild sockeye salmon ($14.79). Costco also carries frozen Alaskan wild sockeye salmon fillets (about $8.50 a pound) , which we steamed for dinner Monday night.

Korean barbecue without the guilt

On Sunday morning, I pulled out two freezer bags with thin-sliced Australian beef in Korean bulgogi marinade. This was the free-range, grass-fed, antibiotic-free whole tenderloin sold at ShopRite under the Nature's Reserve label for as little as $3.99 a pound with a store card.

While the beef was defrosting, I went to H Mart in Little Ferry for two heads of red-leaf lettuce (two for $1), but couldn't find the scallion salad usually served with Korean barbecue. I cooked the beef on a stove-top grill with scallions and garlic, and served it with steamed Korean dumplings, white rice and kimchi -- we wrapped beef, garlic, kimchi and rice in lettuce and went to town.

Mexican dinner from a can

We eat a lot of Readington Farms chicken -- at least once or twice a week -- and in the freezer, I found a tray of wings and another of leg quarters I bought at ShopRite. The chickens are raised on vegetarian feed and without antibiotics. Unfortunately, rarely are they on sale.

We breaded the wings in chili spices and baked them at 375 degrees, but I pan roasted the leg quarters and then let them finish cooking in mildly spicy chipotle sauce and peppers. The sauce came in a 7-ounce can under the La Morena label; the peppers in adobo sauce in a similar can under the La Costena label. I found both at Hackensack Market.

I plated the chicken and plenty of sauce on top of yellow rice, and served them with a salad of organic sprinx mix.

On a food run down south

A friend and I took a drive yesterday into southern Bergen County and part of  Hudson County, looking for good food. We found a heady ethnic mix of Italian, Portuguese, Peruvian, Scottish, Brazilian and Colombian fare, though we didn't sample all of it.

We started out on Ridge Road in Lyndhurst, where every block seemed to have an Italian trattoria, bakery or deli.

Our destination was the corner retail store in the Pechter's factory, which occupies a full square block in Harrison, suffusing the neighborhood with the comforting smell of fresh-baked bread. We bought and split a sliced, three-pound seeded rye (about 2 feet long) for $3.75, and I grabbed some small onion and large poppy seed rolls. (840 Jersey St., 973-373-1200, cash only.)

On the way back, we stopped at The Thistle Restaurant in Kearny, one of the reliable places for Scottish fish and chips. I took out a dinner serving of battered and fried haddock and french fries (from a bag) for $13.95. My 12-year-old son managed to eat about half of it last night; he liked the fish and didn't complain about the fries. (87 Kearny Ave., 201-998-3443.)

Our final stop was Mazur's Bakery in Lyndhurst, where I picked up a pumpkin pie ($7.98). My friend was delighted with a large raisin bread for only 99 cents, a permanent special, the clerk said. (323 Ridge Road, 201-438-8500.)

One of the places I'd like to return to is Oh! Calamares, a stylish-looking Peruvian restaurant in Kearny. The takeout menu lists dishes I haven't seen in other Peruvian places, such as Pollos El Chevere in Passaic, including rabbit, tripe, potatoes in a black-mint sauce and black-conch ceviche.