Clams, crabs, yams, salads and organic whole-wheat pasta

Hundreds of Cherrystone Clams were shucked under a tree on Saturday, the first day of summer, during Members' Day at American Littoral Society in Highlands, above and below.

The clams came from Virginia, because they were cheaper than New Jersey clams, one of the shuckers said.

The headquarters of the American Littoral Society, a coastal conservation group, is in a former lieutenant's house at Fort Hancock, part of the Sandy Hook national park, above and below.

The front porch overlooks Sandy Hook Bay.

Navesink Fishery, in a shopping center on Route 36 in Navesink, above and below, is a homier version of Seafood Gourmet, the fish market-restaurant in Maywood.

I had hoped to have another lunch of soft-shell crabs, like the one I enjoyed on Friday in Maywood, but Navesink Fishery doesn't serve lunch on Saturdays. (1-732-291-8017).

Are these yams or sweet potatoes? ShopRite in Paramus complicates the answer by selling them as "yams/sweet potatoes" for $1.29 a pound. I boiled them with peeled garlic, drained and mashed them with extra-virgin olive oil, salt, curry powder, cinnamon, red-pepper flakes, black pepper and other seasoning. Yams are starchier and probably have more calories.

A wedge of frittata (egg whites, cheese, fresh tomato, garlic and pesto) served with mashed yams/sweet potatoes and leftover Chinese takeout string beans.

A dinner salad from the cafe at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center includes tofu and mozzarella cheese.

Another dinner salad includes red- and green-leaf lettuce from our garden, smoked wild Alaskan sockeye salmon, organic beets, Campari tomatoes and reduced-fat Jarlsberg Lite Swiss Cheese, all dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, above and below. Most of the ingredients are from Costco Wholesale.

Non-organic whole wheat spaghetti, on sale last week at the ShopRite in Paramus, was no bargain, compared to the $1.39 Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market charges for 1 pound of the organic version. But ShopRite did have a sale on 1-pound packages of Luigi Vitelli-brand organic Whole Wheat Capellini from Italy with a cooking time of 3 minutes ($1.25), a whole-wheat shape I haven't seen anywhere else.

Coach House salad bar isn't a good value

One of the three plates of salad I had last weekend at the Coach House Diner.

Unlimited salad and a large bowl of soup are $11.50.

From left, potato salad, pickles, beets, stuffed grape leaves and feta cheese.

I've long been a fan of the salad bar at the Coach House Diner in Hackensack, but on a visit last weekend, it no longer seemed to be a good value. 

The salad bar is free with any entree, so choosing it as a meal for $10.95 or with a large bowl of soup for $11.50 puts you in the position of trying to eat more than you had planned to make it pay off.

And although there are probably 20 to 25 items to choose from, you won't find any hard-boiled eggs, tuna, olives or a lot of other items.

I ordered soup and salad bar. The lobster bisque was filling, but it was nothing special.

No to pasta salads

I'm on a diet, so at the salad bar, I avoided the pasta salads, bread and muffins, and the lettuce was mostly iceberg.

I managed to eat three plates of salad (see photos).

Seafood selection

However, I was impressed by the Coach House's selection of fresh seafood, including red snapper, soft-shell crabs and baby flounder.

My wife ordered the soft-shell crabs with rice ($18.50), and liked the two small crustaceans.

My mother-in-law hesitated ordering the red snapper, recalling the tough, sinewy fillet she got in November 2011 at Amici Family Restaurant in Bergenfield, marking the last time we patronized the place.

But she liked the Lemon-Pepper Red Snapper with two side dishes ($18.95) at the Coach House. 

Two glasses of lemonade were $2.40 each. 

Coach House Diner & Restaurant, 55 Route 4 east (at Hackensack Avenue), Hackensack; 201-488-4999. Open 7 days. Full bar.

Related post

• Just what the doctor ordered

Searching for the perfect lobster roll

Image by dpstyles™ via Flickr

Lobster and lobster-salad rolls.

Lobster is a rare and expensive treat, and the lobster roll is perhaps the easiest way to enjoy this wonderful, armor-plated crustacean.


Restaurants do all the work for you by cooking the live lobsters, cracking the shells and extracting the meat, then dressing it lightly and piling it into a hot dog roll.


We drove over to Panera Bread on Route 4 in Paramus on Wednesday night after I half-heard a TV commercial the night before.


What I thought was a lobster roll turned out to be a lobster sandwich, with lots of bread, some lettuce and only 4 ounces of lobster. 


I had planned to order one for each of us, but at a pricey $16.99 per sandwich, I quickly changed my mind.


We ordered soups, drinks, a single lobster sandwich for my wife and a smoked-turkey panini for my son.


At the register where I placed my order, I noticed a photo of the lobster sandwich showed a lot more meat than the one we got.


I tried some of the lobster and it was delicious. But I'm on a no-bread diet, so eating even half of the sandwich was out of the question.


The search for the perfect lobster roll continues.


I've heard that Picnic, the Restaurant, in Fair Lawn has a great lobster roll, but it's listed online only as part of a $40 fixed-price dinner. I'm sure you can get it at lunch, too.


I also checked the Web site of Luke's Lobster in Manhattan, where the Maine lobster roll is listed at $15. 


When we tried it in November 2009, the roll was $14 and contained 4 ounces of chilled lobster meat.


Soft-shell surprise


This morning, I was surprised to find fresh, wild-caught soft-shell crabs on ice at ShopRite in Hackensack.


I bought two at $3.99 each, dipped them in egg white and seasoned corn meal and pan-fried them in extra-virgin olive oil and Smart Balance spread for 3 minutes to 4 minutes on each side.


One of them made a great breakfast with two fried eggs, sunny side up. My wife and son split the other.


The store also had Coleman organic chicken legs for $1.99 a pound, less than antibiotic-free Readington Farm legs ($2.29 a pound) and even crappy Perdue legs ($2.19 a pound).


On Wednesday, my wife picked up six pints of Jersey Fresh blueberries on sale for $6.99 at the ShopRite in Rochelle Park. They are plump and sweet, and a better buy than the ones I got last week at Costco in Hackensack.


Soft-shell crabs for breakfast and warm, ripe peach slices with wild salmon for dinner. Don't you just love summer food?

Calling all soft-shell crabs

Image by spiralmushroom via Flickr

A soft-shell crab served in a bowl of noodle soup.

The appeal of a soft-shell crab is clear: You enjoy all the meat without the bother of cracking open all that shell. 


The crab does the work for you by shedding its shell several times between late May and September as it grows larger.


Crabs are my son's favorite food, so for a celebratory lunch after his 8th-grade graduation ceremony on Monday, we drove over to Lotus Cafe, the Chinese restaurant in Hackensack.


We wanted to have soft-shell crabs at Lotus Cafe for dinner on June 18, but they ran out of them early that evening. 


A few weeks ago, we had them prepared in Wondee's great Panang curry, but the Thai restaurant in Hackensack was out of them on Sunday, June 19.


Lotus Cafe prepares them three ways: in a spicy garlic sauce, with ginger and scallion or fried -- a preparation called pepper and salt.


We ordered them in garlic sauce and fried, along with water spinach in fresh garlic, soup and bowls of white and brown rice. 


It was a big lunch, but I was happy with canned vegetable soup, and fruit and cheese for dinner.


Lotus Cafe says it uses three crabs in each entree ($19.95). 


The delicious garlic-sauce crab was cut into bite-size pieces and sauteed with crunchy pieces of celery and water chestnuts, and strips of seaweed. 


The second crab entree also was cut into pieces, beautifully fried, and served with bits of garlic and hot pepper. The plate was garnished with a "flower" made from radish, I believe, using toothpicks and a rubber band.


Although soft-shell crab entrees at restaurants are a sure sign of summer, I haven't seen any in the market. 


At Whole Foods Market in Paramus, soft-shell crabs are sold breaded and fried for $5.99 each, an employee at the seafood counter said Tuesday. 


You can buy them online. One Web site is offering a dozen frozen soft-shell crabs for $99.95.


The official Maryland Seafood site says the Chesapeake Bay blue crab increases "by one-third in size" during shedding.


Lotus Cafe, 450 Hackensack Ave., 
in the Home Depot Shopping Center, 
Hackensack; 201-488-7070. BYO.


Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 
296 Main St., 201-883-1700;  BYO, parking in rear,
http://www.wondeenj.com/ 

Another great (meatless) meal at Wondee's

Image via Wikipedia

We didn't get to Wondee's until 8:45 or so Saturday night, but we were lucky to get the last vacant table. My wife and I ate only seafood or vegetarian dishes at the Thai restaurant in Hackensack, where we pledged to go meatless on Feb. 28. But our 13-year-old son, celebrating his birthday, ordered wonton soup with sliced pork (he says it's the best he's ever had).

It was another great meal at one of our all-time favorites and we didn't miss meat. The value is outstanding. Wondee's is one of the few restaurants in North Jersey where a whole fish is priced at $16.95 (up recently from $14.95).


We ordered fried shrimp dumplings with a tasty plum sauce, mock duck salad (with crispy tofu instead of crispy duck), soft-shell crabs in Panang curry (a special) and pineapple fried rice with shrimp.


Everything was terrific, but we especially like the two big crabs (cut in four pieces) in the spicy curry, which was flecked with red pepper ($16.95). The dish included some crisp green beans and sweet pepper.


The fried rice dish is so much bolder than Chinese fried rice, which often is made from leftovers. Wondee's version includes big chunks of canned pineapple and three or four crunchy shrimp.


Our son didn't eat all of the sliced pork in his soup -- only the second or third time he has had meat in the two and a half months since we decided to give up meat and eat seafood.

Wondee's has a vegetarian menu and offers vegetarian versions of dishes with meat. For example, another special was a Thai summer roll with or without sweet sausage in tamarind sauce. But we got there too late; the kitchen was out of the meatless version.




Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 
296 Main St., 201-883-1700;  parking in rear
http://www.wondeenj.com/