Wild salmon with ripe mango

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Adding ripe mango to wild salmon makes for a sweet and savory meal.

The fresh, wild-caught fish came from the northwestern United States, but I found the other ingredients in my kitchen and garden.


I picked up another large fillet of wild sockeye salmon at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack on Monday ($7.99 a pound), and prepared it for dinner with lemon juice, coarsely ground Aleppo red pepper, chopped fresh herbs and slices of intensely sweet Champagne mango.


I took out two rare portions after about 10 minutes in a 375-degree oven and the rest cooked through in 15 minutes.


The sweet mango was delicious hot and contrasted nicely with the bite of the red pepper and the peppery chopped basil, oregano and rosemary.


The skin-on fillet weighed about 1.75 pounds and yielded seven portions, which I placed in a baking pan lined with aluminum foil that was coated with cooking spray. I placed the mango between the portions.


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First, I squeezed on lemon juice, then added the ground red pepper, then topped the portions with the chopped herbs. I used mango, because I couldn't find ripe peaches at ShopRite or Costco.


I ate my fish with a big salad, and my wife and son had theirs with leftover yellow rice and sliced cucumber. 


I've been having a love affair with the wild salmon that has been available at Costco since late May. It makes a delicious, nutritious meal I can put on the table in 15  minutes or less.


On my trip to Costco, I also picked up 6 pounds of large white-flesh peaches from California ($8.99), 5.5 pounds of large Gala apples from Washington State ($6.99),  2 pounds of Roma hothouse tomatoes from Canada ($3.29), 1 pound of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix ($4.79) and Manchego sheep's milk cheese from Spain ($8.29 a pound).

Going wild over wild salmon

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I combined fresh wild sockeye salmon and smoked wild sockeye in a superb breakfast sandwich this morning. 


The fresh fish was left over from dinner last night, when I baked the fillet I bought at Costco with a little salt, Aleppo red pepper, chopped herbs and lemon juice. At 350 degrees, I got rare pieces in about 7 minutes, medium in about 10 minutes.


I toasted whole-grain bread, spread one piece with homemade pesto, added the two kinds of wild salmon, tomato with za'atar thyme mixture, organic salad greens, a little parsley-and-red-onion salad and sliced cheese. Wow.


The bread, preservative-free smoked salmon, Campari tomato and organic salad greens also came from Costco.

(Photo: Sockeye salmon)

Can buying food cheer you up?

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What a miserable day. No sunlight, rain lashing the house and wind making the half-dozen tall cedars looming over my property twist and sway.

By this afternoon, the rain had subsided and I drove the two miles to Costco in Hackensack for its wonderful Kirkland-brand smoked wild Alaskan sockeye salmon. That should cheer me up at breakfast for the rest of the week.

But on this Monday, for the second week, there was only smoked farmed salmon. That wasn't good enough. I asked an employee if there was some of the wild fish in back, and he said, as he did last week, whatever is out there. How long will this drought last?

Traveling on your stomach at Costco

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Costco in Hackensack has become one of my favorite places to shop for food -- despite the crowds, the frantic parking lot and some inconsiderate shoppers, who think nothing of leaving a cart up against your fender.

You never know what you'll find there or how far it has traveled. And no store in North Jersey I know of can match the prices for this quality food and produce. It's even a better deal when you consider the cash rebates from the American Express Costco credit card easily reimburse you for the annual membership fee.

The past two Fridays, I saw whole red snappers from Nicaragua in the fish case. Smoked wild sockeye salmon (preservative free) from Alaska is now sold year-round under the store brand, Kirkland. Last night, I finished the last fresh flounder fillet from Iceland we had fried Friday.

Last week, I bought a 12-pound box of oranges from South Africa. The antioxidant-rich acai berry juice in my fridge is from Brazil. For my espresso machine, I've also brought home a 4-pound bag of whole coffee beans grown in Africa. And I'm working on a big wedge of Manchego sheep-milk's cheese from Spain.

Costco sells a ranch full of beef and pork, but all of them are conventionally raised with antibiotics, except for organic ground beef. What you want is the grass-fed, free-range lamb from Australia, usually available as chops or boneless legs.

The store also stocks a lot of terrific food grown domestically, such as the one-pound package of Earthbound Farms organic spring mix I eat weekly.

Of course, there is also the possibility you'll buy and like an item, then find the store no longer stocks it. I recall fondly the fully prepared, drug-free lamb shanks in mint sauce from New Zealand that we enjoyed on a few occasions, but never saw again.

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A colorful, delicious summer dinner

After my salad and seafood lunch today at Artisanal (see previous post), I felt like a light dinner, so I baked a fillet of fresh wild salmon that I bought at Costco on Saturday, seasoning it with salt, cumin, Aleppo red pepper and fresh chopped parsley from the garden. In a 350-degree oven, 11-12 minutes gave me five medium-rare pieces from a fillet of average thickness.

For a salad, I prepared No. 7 on the list of "101 Simple Salads for the Season" that was in The New York Times on July 22: "Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft." I didn't have sunflower seeds so substituted pistachios and almonds, both salted. I grated four small carrots and added about a third a of a pint of Jersey blueberries.

I sliced and toasted a Balthazar dinner roll, poured what was left of some Portuguese vinho verde and Spanish sparking grape juice and really enjoyed my Sunday night meal.

Shopping notes: I picked up the blueberries at Fairway Market in Harlem, where I stopped for goat meat (the Paramus Fairway doesn't carry it). In Manhattan, the Jersey fruit was priced at two for $4, compared with two for $5 last week at ShopRite in Hackensack. The fresh wild sockeye salmon is $8.99 a pound at Costco and has been consistently delicious. And Fairway's price for goat meat on the bone, $2.99 a pound, is a great price in view of the quality (more meat than bone).