Cooking with arugula, pasta shells and whole whiting

Organic whole-wheat pasta shells from Whole Foods Market in bottled marinara with added white wine, extra-virgin olive oil, anchovies, capers, organic diced tomatoes, baby spinach and arugula.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The peppery flavor of arugula -- one of my favorite greens -- was immediately evident when it started showing up in Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix a few weeks ago.

I have fond memories of a white pizza with arugula -- also called rocket -- and prosciutto I enjoyed more than once at Trattoria La Sorrentina in North Bergen, but that was before I stopped eating meat. 

So, when I saw a 5-ounce package of arugula at the International Food Warehouse in Lodi this week, I decided to add it a cooked pasta dish and my usual salad of spring mix, cucumber and tomato.

In making the pasta dish, I put about a half-pound of organic baby spinach in a large colander and poured the hot water and pasta over them, then added drained pasta, spinach and fresh arugula to another pot with the sauce I had prepared. 

The imported whole-wheat pasta shells took less time to cook al dente than what is listed on the package. 

I used a half-pound of shells and half of a 32-ounce bottle of Kirkland Signature Marinara.

The 5-ounce package of pre-washed arugula was $1.99. At Costco Wholesale, 1-pound plastic tubs of pre-washed organic spring mix and organic baby spinach were $4.99 and $4.29, respectively.

I added peppery arugula, Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese and fresh blueberries to an organic spring mix salad with cucumbers and tomato wedges, all dressed in extra-virgin olive oil and Ponti Balsamic Vinegar, which is free of caramel color.

Coastal Valley Farms Organic Spring Mix was available on Tuesday at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack for the same price as Earthbound Farm's organic salad, but I couldn't find a use-by date on the package of the new product. Both are $4.99 for 16 ounces.

Whole whiting

One of our favorite whole fish is fresh, wild-caught whiting, which is flaky, sweet and has a minimum of bones.

They're inexpensive, too, usually $3.99 a pound at H Mart, the Korean supermarket chain.

Whiting also is a relatively small fish that has potentially much less mercury than larger fish.

On Friday, my wife seasoned, floured and pan-fried whiting she had cut in half. 

I had a leftover piece of wild king salmon for dinner, but got to the whiting this morning.

An egg-free breakfast of pan-fried whiting, upper right; fried plantains, and spicy Korean stewed tofu and Alaskan pollock, both from H Mart in Englewood.

Pan-fried whole whiting are sweet and easy to eat.

Leftover wild king salmon with pesto, Aleppo pepper and fresh lime juice.

A new pesto?

The price, jar size and ingredients list are the same, but the refrigerated Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto I brought home from Costco Wholesale on May 6 seems different ($7.99).

The great taste is still there, but it has lost the bright-green color of the Italian-grown basil that is one of the main ingredients.

Basil Pesto still makes a great sandwich spread and pasta sauce, with no heating required, and can be added as a garnish to frittatas, baked sweet potatoes and soup.  

Problem checkout at ShopRite isn't my fault

On Wednesday morning, shoppers packed the ShopRite in Paramus in anticipation of today's snowstorm, but when the store computer didn't give me the sale price on 5.27 pounds of sweet potatoes, my checkout line came to a standstill.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss a slow checkout at the ShopRite in Paramus that was the store's fault, homemade dishes using ingredients from H Mart and Costco Wholesale, and a tasty version of tabbouleh from Costco.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Don't look at me, I told shoppers in my checkout line on Wednesday morning at the ShopRite in Paramus, where the clerk flipped on a flashing light to summon a supervisor.

In the produce department, I saw that the sweet potatoes I bought last week for 99 cents a pound were now 89 cents a pound, with an additional 20 cents off per pound, if I bought more than 5 pounds and used the store's Price Plus Club Card.

Last week, the checkout computer deducted the 20 cents per pound automatically, but on Wednesday morning, it didn't and I mentioned it to the clerk.

She flipped on the flashing light of her lane number to summon a supervisor, and I could see shoppers in line behind me react with rolling eyes.

On weekday mornings around 9 a.m., the Paramus ShopRite is fairly quiet, but on Wednesday, dire forecasts of another big snowstorm touched off panic food shopping.

Not much help

The supervisor came over, spoke with clerk, left and then returned, saying the promotional discount of 20 cents is only good, if I had purchased 5 pounds or more.

But I had.

To resolve the logjam, I suggested the clerk deduct $1 dollar from my order (5 pounds times 20 cents), and get the line moving.

First, she added $1, but I caught the error and the supervisor approved the deduction.

Finally, I was out of there with my sweet potatoes, lactose-free milk, apples, strawberries and Smart Balance spread.

Bibimbap is a rice-based Korean comfort dish that is known for being labor intensive. I made a meatless version with organic brown rice and an organic brown egg, above, with a lot of help from Jinga's Seasoned Vegetables, which I picked up at the H Mart in Little Ferry. The package includes a small cup of mildly spicy gochujang, a red pepper paste, but I added more from a container I had in the refrigerator.

I made four cups of organic brown rice in an electric cooker, but you can reduce the amount of rice, if your prefer a higher concentration of vegetables.

Korean bargains

At H Mart in Little Ferry on Monday, I picked up fresh, wild-caught whole whiting for $3.49 a pound, Kabocha Squash for 59 cents a pound and a 15-pound bag of California-grown Kokuho Yellow Label Rice for $8.99, a discount of $6.

We pan-fried the whiting, and served them with mashed Kabocha squash and sweet potatoes moistened with a few ounces of extra-virgin olive oil and seasoned with a little salt and Costco's Organic No-Salt Seasoning.

Everything but the za'atar thyme mixture and Aleppo pepper I used to season this frittata came from Costco Wholesale: Smoked wild salmon, shredded Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, Jarlsberg Reduced Fat Swiss Cheese, organic brown eggs and egg whites.

Another labor-intensive dish is tabbouleh, a Middle Eastern salad of cracked wheat mixed with finely chopped tomato, fresh parsley, onions and other ingredients. A version sold at Costco Wholesale is pleasantly tart.

The version sold at Costco is from Hannah International Foods in New Hampshire. The company drops a "b" and the "h," calling its product Taboule.



Vine Valley

Vine Valley was a Lebanese restaurant in Paterson that closed several years ago, but I'll never forget its tabbouleh, a tall, fluffy mound of finely chopped fresh parsley, tomato, onion and cracked wheat.

Hannah Taboule, sold at Costco Wholesale, is a tasty version.

A 21-ounce container of refrigerated tabbouleh was $5.49 at my Hackensack Costco.
 

A free introduction to Korean food

A customer stops for a free sample of Korean noodles at H Mart in Fort Lee.

If you haven't already discovered the vibrant flavors of Korean food, H Marts in Bergen County provide an easy way to try the cuisine without spending money on a restaurant meal.

On the weekends, H Marts in Fort Lee, Englewood, Little Ferry and Ridgefield provide free samples of fruit, Korean noodles, rice cakes, seaweed-vegetable rolls and other food, and not all of it is spicy.

On Sunday, I sampled translucent noodles called japchae at the main Fort Lee store, as well as dried fish, fruit, rice cakes and a seaweed-egg omelet.

The woman offering the free noodle samples attracted customers with a sing-song, "Japchae ... kimbap sushi ...japchae."

Translucent noodles with vegetables were $5.49.

Vegetable, rice and seaweed rolls (kimbap) contain egg and imitation crab.

H Mart also is a great place to buy fresh fish, and prices are among the lowest around. 

All seafood is labeled with country of origin and whether it is wild or farm-raised.

At the H Mart fish counter in Fort Lee, wild carp trumps farmed pompano from China.

I found whole, wild-caught whiting from the United States at the H Mart Fresh in Fort Lee for $4.49 a pound, and we had it for Sunday dinner, along with fresh broccoli and organic brown rice with organic diced tomatoes prepared in an electric cooker.

We love whiting for its minimum amount of bones and its maximum of flaky, white fish. I also bought japchae and kimbap at H Mart Fresh.
 
A farmer's market was operating on Sunday across the street from H Mart Fresh, the smaller of the two H Marts in Fort Lee. The last day for the outdoor market is Nov. 18.

Whole pan-fried whiting with broccoli and organic brown rice.

H Mart, 112 Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee; 201-947-7800. H Mart Fresh, 1379 16th St., Fort Lee; 201-944-9009.

For other store locations, consult the Web site:

H Mart

  

How to keep the almonds and lose the salt

Image via Wikipedia

Shelled almonds, like the raw, unsalted ones available at Costco.

I've cut down almost completely on bread and pizza to lose weight,  but find myself snacking frequently on crunchy roasted or blanched almonds from Costco in Hackensack.

But as I wrote in a previous post, salt in the almonds became a concern after I looked at the labels and discovered the more expensive Kirkland Signature Marcona blanched almonds from Spain have twice as much salt as the Kirkland dry-roasted almonds from California. 

Comparing salt

A 28-gram or 1-ounce serving of the Spanish almond contains 9% sodium, compared with 4% for the same serving size of the California almond (on the daily value scale). The former costs $7.99 for 17.63 ounces, while you'll pay $8.89 for 40 ounces of the latter. They are both delicious.

So I bought a three-pound bag of Kirkland Signature raw, unsalted almonds and added some of them to the jar of the Kirkland dry-roasted almonds, but I found the raw almonds weren't my cup of tea.

I fished them out, and put them in the oven for an hour at a low 250 degrees, and they took on a nice crunch. I then roasted the rest of the raw, unsalted almonds. When the salted almonds are finished, I'll just buy the unsalted ones, roast them and put them in the empty jar.

By roasting the raw almonds, I've eliminated salt from a favorite snack, which is delicious when paired with fruit and cheese, and saved money, too. Three pounds  of raw almonds cost only $9.99.

The label notes almonds are a heart-healthy food. They are described as U.S. #1, "supreme whole." 

Breakfast from Costco

My breakfast organic spring mix salad with wild lox, sheep's milk and reduced-fat Swiss cheeses, sun-dried and fresh Campari tomatoes, and sliced cucumber -- all of it came from Costco in Hackensack.

So did the Dijon mustard in my dressing of Greek extra-virgin olive oil and Italian balsamic vinegar. If you have to give up bread, a filling salad is one way to compensate. 

Dinner from H Mart

I found fresh, wild-caught whole whiting at H Mart in Fort Lee for $3.49 a pound on Monday, as well as bunches of fresh spinach for $1.79 each. 

I cut the two fish into two or three pieces and cooked them in Chinese cooking wine, sesame oil, fish sauce, soy sauce (with ponzu) and chopped fresh ginger.

I washed and then blanched the spinach in hot water, put it into a second pan with a little olive oil and seasoned it. 

I served the fish and spinach with organic brown rice cooked in organic chicken broth, both from Costco. (I let the rice soak in the broth in a rice cooker for several hours.)

We started off with kimbap -- seaweed-wrapped rolls of rice, vegetables and imitation crab meat. I found a 22-ounce package for $4.99 in the prepared-food section of H Mart.

At La Ziza Restaurant in Clifton

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

La Ziza is a Lebanese restaurant near the Paterson Farmers' Market that opened recently in the space once occupied by Al Assayad.

Unfortunately, the use of a hookah (photo) is allowed in the dining room, a concession to smokers that drove me away from the old place.

Luckily, only a few other tables were occupied while I had dinner last night, and I didn't find the fruity smoke a problem. I asked Jamal, the waiter, if smoking the water pipe improved the appetite, and he said he didn't think so.


I watched people at the next table as they ate, then smoked a little and then returned to eating. I still don't get it.


At the old place, to get away from the smoking, we asked to be seated on the second floor. But the service was poor, because the waiter had to run up and down the stairs.


Fortunately, the food at La Ziza is good enough to persuade me to return with my wife and son.


After I placed my order, I got the usual plate of pickles and olives, and warm, chewy pocket bread, which, as is the custom at Arabic restaurants, is microwaved in the plastic bag (with a small opening).


I enjoyed a fatoush salad ($6.95), which combines romaine lettuce with cucumbers, tomato, onion and fried bread chunks in a lemony dressing that includes powdered sumac. I wasn't sure whether it was sumac, because it lacked the sourness of the sumac used in the za'atar thyme mixture.
 
I ordered the fried whiting listed on the menu ($12.95), and received a platter of rice with fried bread sandwiching four whole fish, each about seven to eight inches long. They had been quickly fried, leaving a crunchy tail and head and moist flesh along the bone. Wonderful. I ate two fish there and the rest for dinner tonight at home.


Strong, smooth Arabic coffee came in a small pot ($2), enough for two cups.


This would be a terrific place for maza, the meal of small plates chosen from the appetizers, such as fava beans and spicy potatoes, to name just two of the meatless items. But carnivores will find plenty of meat throughout the menu.

La Ziza Restaurant, 341 Crooks Ave., Clifton
(Crooks Avenue divides Paterson and Clifton);
973-772-2700.

For an update on La Ziza, see North Jersey-style food run