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.

An unusual breakfast in South Paterson

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I dashed out this morning for bread, sardines, canned hummus, spinach pie and Lebanese extra-virgin olive oil from Fattal's Syrian Bakery in Paterson, then went looking for breakfast.


I drove a few blocks to Luna Bakery & Sweets (1071 Main St.), and asked for a Turkish breakfast (thick bread, hard-boiled egg, cheese, tomato and cucumber, and strong tea). 

Not wanting to turn a customer away, the Syrian baker served me tea; strained yogurt with nuts, which I ate with a spoon; a round, thin, flat bread spread with the thyme-based za'atar mixture; dough and cheese baked into a boat shape, and a pizza made with Syrian and mozzarella cheeses that was dusted with mint and a little red pepper. 


There was enough food for two and I took a few items home. After I told the baker my parents were from Aleppo, he said he was a native and described the many changes he's witnessed. Change also was evident around his business in South Paterson, he said, but he believes the quality of his dough has kept him afloat.


Across the street, the shuttered Syrian bakery Mondial is getting a makeover and a stylish, brick restaurant called Grill House is expected to open soon. On Getty Avenue, near Main Street, a storefront that once claimed to have the best falafel sandwich in the world has closed.



At Fattal's (975-77 Main St.), the sardines from Morocco and canned Lebanese hummus can't be beat (99 cents a can). Three liters of La Ziza-brand Lebanese extra-virgin olive oil rang up at $17.49. Six of Fattal's long, sesame-seeded spinach pies are $8.99, and freeze beautifully.


I turned off Getty at East Railway Avenue to check out produce in the Farmers' Market. But I ended up buying a small dogwood tree at Brothers Produce for $10, and driving home. 

(Photo: Aleppo, Syria)

Why Fattal's bread doesn't travel well

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I have been eating bread from Fattal's Syrian Bakery in Paterson for decades, but have always wondered why I don't see it in served in restaurants or sold in grocery stores.


Down to my last two loaves and not wanting to drive the 20-mile round trip to South Paterson, I stopped for bread Tuesday at Sahara Stores on South Summit Avenue in Hackensack and discovered canned goods for the same prices as at Fattal's.

After I paid, I asked Mohsen Mekawi, the friendly proprietor, why he doesn't carry bread from Fattal's, which I consider the best in North Jersey. It's simple, he said. Fattal's is the only Middle Eastern bakery that doesn't credit him for unsold bread.

The others take back the day-old bread and deduct it from the bill for the loaves that are delivered fresh daily, he said. With Fattal's, he is stuck with old bread.

I bought two packages of Kings Pita (no hyphen), a thinner, larger, Lebanese-style pocket bread, for $1.50 each. The bread is baked in Paterson, unlike Fattal's bread, which is now baked in Fair Lawn.

But Kings Pita is only a stopgap, because it isn't as tasty or as good a value as Fattal's loaves. I'll have to try some of the other brands sold at Sahara Stores (despite the name, it's only one store) when I'm out of Fattal's and don't want to drive to South Paterson.

Breakfast spans the globe

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I opened the refrigerator, bottles and a can to assemble a delicious, globe-spanning breakfast this morning. I only had to warm pocket bread and pour some iced tea to make it complete.


On a small plate, I covered tomato slices with za'atar thyme mixture, and placed some cabbage kimchi next to it. On a larger plate, I arranged stewed tofu in red pepper sauce, two fat Moroccan sardines in spicy oil, a ball of Lebanese yogurt cheese, an Egyptian preserved lemon and the warm bread. I also had imported hummus, made from a can.


The instant black tea came from ShopRite -- I added water, fresh lemon juice and mint from my garden. Most of the other ingredients came from Fattal's Syrian Bakery in Paterson. The kimchi and tofu were from Arirang Kimchi in Englewood and H Mart in Little Ferry, respectively.


All this great food found a home in my kitchen.

Who forgot to scale my red snapper?

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I find my self buying more fish and related items at Costco in Hackensack. I used to drop into a Korean supermarket each week to browse among 20 or more different whole fish for our family meal, but I've been succumbing to the convenience of picking up lots of items at once in the warehouse store.

Costco usually has fillets of such wild fish as meaty haddock or the more delicate flounder (photo) that are great for frying. Starting in June, wild salmon will start showing up. Year round, you usually can find smoked wild salmon, lobster ravioli, king crab and corn chowder, and other items.

Costco also stages a Seafood Road Show, starting on Fridays, with enormous tiger shrimp, big crab legs, clams, mussels and other items, but we try to avoid farmed shrimp (because of habitat destruction).

On Thursday, I was checking out the fish fillets when I saw beautiful whole red snapper from Panama in shrink-wrapped foam trays that had been put out that day. Their eyes were clear. I bought a package of two that weighed a total of 2.2 pounds at $5.49 a pound. My wife loves the head, my son the tail and me the middle of the fish.

For dinner, I opened a can of diced tomatoes and another of tomato paste, emptied them into a large pan with a clear glass cover and added extra-virgin olive oil, Italian seasoning, red-pepper flakes, salt and garlic powder. I started to cut three slashes into the body of one fish when my wife noticed the red snapper had been gutted and cleaned but hadn't been scaled, and she grabbed a fork and went to work over the sink.

The two fish didn't fit into the pan, so I cut them in half  (nearer the tail), laid the pieces over the sauce, covered the pan and cooked them over medium heat until the exposed flesh turned white -- approximately 20 to 25 minutes. I served them with leftover yellow rice, crunchy French green beans I picked up on the same trip to Costco and warm pocket bread. If you use two cans of diced tomatoes and tomato paste, you can boil some pasta and cover it with the fish-flavored sauce.

The beans had been blanched in boiling water, then cooked for about five minutes in a covered pan with lemon-flavored olive oil, salt and Costco's organic no-salt seasoning. A wonderful meal, despite the need to scale the fish. But I plan to go to customer service today to register my complaint.

Shopping, tasting and recipe notes

At ShopRite in Rochelle Park, not one of my favorite stores, I had to buy a half-gallon of Organic Valley lactose-free milk for $4.99 yesterday instead of Horizon organic lactose-free milk for $4.19, because the Horizon half-gallons were setting on a shelf covered in milk and I couldn't tell which one was leaking.

I also bought a pound of Sunset-brand, herbicide-free kumatoes, which are black-purple outside, black-purple and red inside, for $2.50. Today, I opened the package, only to find two of the five tomatoes were slightly bruised and mushy. They originally are from the Galapagos Islands. I tried slices in pocket-bread sandwiches with tuna-red salmon-sardine salad (chopped onions, Dijon mustard, cumin and lime juice, plus all the liquid from cans), salad greens and thin-sliced Swiss cheese.Yum.

I counted nearly 20 greens at H Mart in Englewood on Friday, where I stopped after dropping off my son for his piano lesson. I saw Korean mustard greens, collard, a variety of Chinese greens and vegetables, and fresh spinach. I bought a nice bunch of spinach ($1.49), and at home, chopped off the ends, quickly blanched it in boiling water and sauteed it with olive oil, powdered garlic, black pepper and salt. I served it with Murray's antibiotic-free chicken leg quarters, baked Korean yams (bought from an employee tending an oven outside the store) and small salads.

Since the first of the year, we have eaten beef only once. We continue to consume a great deal of seafood for breakfast and dinner, at home and in restaurants, including the canned fish salad I referred to above, wild red snapper, grouper, frozen wild salmon, salmon sashimi, wild-caught shrimp (with orzo in tomato sauce), smoked wild salmon, fresh and canned sardines and Korean-style, pan-fried whiting. All of them are low in mercury.

I even ordered a pizza last night and asked for half with anchovies and hot peppers, from Metro Gourmet Brick Oven Pizza and Restaurant, Hackensack's newest pizzeria (my son got sausage and hot peppers on his half). It was a delicious pie, with a thin, well-baked crust (I asked for it well-done).

On my weekly trip to Costco last Monday, I picked up three quarts of Bolthouse Farms organic carrot juice and noticed the price had dropped to $5.89, from a high of $7.50 (which was already a great price for 100% juice). That night, I thawed, seasoned and steamed three fillets of Costco's frozen wild sockeye salmon with red wine, a little olive oil and lime juice. In a covered Pyrex dish on top of a pot of boiling water, they cooked in seven minutes (medium rare). Delish.

Metro Gourmet Brick Oven Pizza & Restaurant, 
111 Anderson Ave. (next to the tracks), Hackensack;
201-488-2511; open seven days, free delivery.