At Bocconi in Hackensack, a tasty dinner of vegetables, fish and wine

Grey Sole Oreganata with Shrimp and White Wine, one of two wild-caught fish entrees at Bocconi Restaurant in Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The list of specials at Bocconi Restaurant in Hackensack would please anyone who doesn't eat meat or poultry.

Vegetables, salads and shellfish appetizers are the prelude to nearly a dozen pasta and seafood entrees on the one-page listing.

On Saturday, we visited the moderately priced Italian-American restaurant for the third time, and though we had a nice dinner, saw some limitations.

A half-dozen fish entrees are offered, but only two are wild caught, grey sole and tuna.

I'm watching my cholesterol intake, and found Bocconi was less accommodating than on earlier visits when I asked the kitchen to hold the butter.

And the specials menu didn't list a small block of tangy goat cheese that came with a wonderful appetizer of beets and arugula.

Salmon Grilled Over Arugula & Cherry Tomato.

Vegetables, fish and salad

We started with appetizers of Asparagus Gratinato ($9.95) for my wife and Red Beet Carpaccio for me ($12.50).

My wife wanted wild-caught Grey Sole Oreganata ($18.95) for her entree, the dish I had on our first visit, and I chose the second wild fish, tuna, on our last visit.

So, looking for something else, I was left to pick one of the farmed fish, and I chose Salmon Grilled Over Arugula & Cherry Tomato ($20.95).

I asked for the fish to be prepared medium to medium rare, but it was delivered cooked through, though still moist.

When compared to its wild cousin, artificially colored farmed salmon isn't a very exciting fish -- raw or cooked.

At least it was a nice portion, and came with a great salad of peppery arugula, my favorite green.

The other farmed seafood offered are branzino, tilapia and shrimp. 

Details

Bocconi Restaurant, 363 Essex St., Hackensack (near Prospect Avenue); 201-342-3888. Web site: bocconifood.com

BYO. On weekends, reservations aren't necessary.

A tiny lot off Prospect means you're better off parking across Essex Street at the medical building with a Starbucks Coffee on the ground level.

An appetizer of Asparagus Gratinato with Grated Cheese and White Wine Sauce. We liked the small dish of pitted olives served with it. The waiter said the asparagus were made with only a "little" butter.

A block of tangy goat cheese crowning Red Beet Carpaccio, another appetizer, wasn't listed on the specials menu, and the price shown also was incorrect ($9.95 on the menu, $12.50 on the receipt)

Bocconi Restaurant is a BYO with about 50 seats. I brought a bottle of Italian red wine.

Crusty Italian bread comes with butter and for dipping, extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and grated cheese.

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. 

 

What's wrong with these pictures?

Image by dougtone via Flickr

I was leafing through (201) magazine at Hackensack Toyota, where my car was being serviced on Thursday, when I came across the main article on food: elaborate dishes by chefs at five of Bergen County's best restaurants.

What's the purpose of such an article, which had mouth-watering close-ups of the food? Is it to promote the restaurants? Is it to inspire readers to go and order the dish, or to attempt to duplicate it at home? Is the magazine saying, Maybe you can advertise with us? Or is it the magazine's way of saying thank you to advertisers?

So I took a closer look. Four of the dishes employed seafood, but two used deep-red tuna that was cooked rare. Seems like a lack of coordination there, and tuna is a fish very high in harmful mercury. A third dish used salmon, but it was likely farmed salmon, which is artificially colored and often contains contaminants. The fourth dish was lobster in a creamy sauce.

I won't be running out to try any of these dishes. I cook seafood at home, using wild-caught fish low in mercury. Thanks (201), but no thanks. (Photo: A road in Bergen County.)

More meat-free meals

Image via Wikipedia

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.

A celebratory meal in the city

Billie Holiday via last.fm

I'm celebrating my birthday this week with meals at restaurants familiar and new.

Last night, I had some terrific fish at Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill, across from the Time-Warner Center in Manhattan. Before dining there, I looked over the $275 tasting menus at Per Se. I was surprised that service (tip) is included.

At Blue Ribbon, I started with a crunchy seaweed salad ($7) and a trio of sushi rolls ($16.50) -- Spanish mackerel, California and tuna, which I eat only a few times a year because of its high mercury content. The rice in the rolls was warm and the tuna melted in my mouth.

My entree was juicy, pan-roasted mahi-mahi ($28), also known as dolphin fish. It was served on a thick bed of  julienned vegetables and crowned by a large tangle of  thread-like, fried carrot -- how did they do that? Unfortunately, the fish was bathed in a plum-butter sauce that had no plum taste and I blame the dim lighting for my not noticing that on the menu description (I try to avoid butter). If there is a next time, I'll ask for a soy-sake sauce.

I washed it all down with a 22-ounce bottle of Kirin Ichiban beer ($10). The restaurant is windowless and uses paper napkins. When you are led to your table, you'll hear shouted greetings from the five sushi chefs. The sound system has songs by Billie Holiday and Ray Charles, a fitting appetizer for the jazz concert I attended later.

For commentary on food coverage in The Record, see:

http://eyeontherecord.blogspot.com/

Good for the ocean, but not good for you

The Record's Better Living section has the usual food coverage in a Monday paper -- a single vegetarian recipe -- but under Health on F-8, there is more: a Washington Post story about fish that are not only caught sustainably but are also rich "in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids," a key in reducing the risk of heart disease. Pole-caught albacore tuna is listed, but the rankings by the "influential" Monterey Bay Aquarium don't take this tuna's high mercury content into account. So the headline isn't really accurate: "Good for the oceans and good for you." The story probably could have used a subhead: "Oh, but not the albacore tuna."

This is one of the dangers of running a lot of stories supplied by outside sources, including the Washington Post, especially when, like The Record, your food and copy editors know little about what is healthy and what is not.

Another fish jumps into the salad

I continue to tweak my no-mayonnaise canned fish salad, this time by adding anchovies and fresh lemon juice in addition to pickled lemons (recipe follows). See previous posts, "Cleopatra's tuna-sardine salad" and "Way better than tuna salad."

I combined Alaskan red salmon, albacore tuna (two cans), spicy Moroccan sardines and anchovies, with their oil or water to keep the salad moist. I added a small red onion (diced)  and three small pickled lemons (minced), plus juice from a large lemon. I also added a half cup or more of powdered cumin. Diced celery would be great, too.

The pickled lemon and the spicy oil from the sardines came through, but I couldn't taste the anchovies. I'm still getting the heart-healthy benefit of their Omega-3 fatty acids, which is found in all the fish I used. You could even invite a fifth fish -- salted cod -- to join the party.

If you miss the mayo, I suppose you can spread some on your sandwich bread or toast, but I prefer pesto, hummus or my own low-fat organic yogurt cheese. Feel free to add organic greens and sliced tomatoes with za'atar spice mixture or even sliced cheese, such as Trader Joe's yogurt cheese with jalapenos.

Four-fish salad

1 can of Alaskan red salmon (about 15 ounces)

1 can of albacore or light tuna in oil or water

1 can of Moroccan or other sardines

1 can of anchovies with or without capers

3 small pickled lemons, minced


1 small red onion, diced


juice of one large lemon or more to taste

powdered cumin to taste

Add the fish with their liquid to a large bowl and mash with a fork. Add the other ingredients. You can find the pickled lemons, za'atar and cumin in a Middle Eastern market, such as Fattal's at 975 Main St. in Paterson (973-742-7125) or Sahara Stores at 242 S. Summit Ave. in  Hackensack (201-487-7222).