Putting a Korean accent on raw fish

Raw fish over rice at Woochun Restaurant in Palisades Park is dressed with a mildly spicy red-pepper paste from a squeeze bottle on the table, and served with six meatless side dishes and a small bowl of soup, below.

 

Editor's note: Today, I discuss the Korean way of decontructing sushi, and a great bowl of clam chowder at Fairmount Eats in Hackensack.

Those Japanese rolls of fish, rice and seaweed called sushi are terrific, but the Koreans have managed to deconstruct and improve on this healthy combination.

Order raw fish over rice at Woochun Restaurant in Palisades Park, and the sushi chef will send over a large bowl of fresh salad greens, bean sprouts, cucumber and seaweed topped with a few ounces of fluke, salmon and tuna ($15.99).

The rice is served on the side, and I asked for brown instead of white.  I also told the waitress to hold the tuna to cut down on mercury consumption.
 

Woochun keeps metal chopsticks and spoons in a box on the table.

 


I also ate the rice on the side, but I think I was supposed to put it in the big bowl, add lots of the red-pepper paste called gochujang and mix everything up like the classic Korean dish bibimbap -- rice, vegetables, ground meat and a fried or raw egg.

Along with the bowl of fresh spring mix and fish, I got six free side dishes: kimchi, greens, fish cake, radish, potatoes and ginger with hot pepper, plus soup and hot tea.

I couldn't finish all of that, plus a few more free side dishes I asked for, and took salad home.

The fluke in the dish may come from the live fish in large tanks at the back of the restaurant.  

The next time I order raw fish over rice I'll ask only for the wild-caught fluke, which is terrific eaten cooked or raw.
 

Near the rest rooms at the back of Woochun is a swinging door that leads to a Korean bar. The bar is BYO, serves food and is said to be a separate business.

 

Woochun Restaurant, 280 Broad Ave, Palisades Park; 201-242-9999. Free parking on side streets.

Manhattan Clam Chowder and a cup of organic coffee at Fairmount Eats.

A briny bowl of soup

On Saturday, I stopped at Fairmount Eats in Hackensack for coffee and a bowl of soup, and was served a wonderful Manhattan Clam Chowder with fresh, tender clams ($3.45).

I liked it so much I ordered a second bowl and a second cup of organic coffee ($1.65 with free refill).

The light, briny broth was filled with potatoes, clam pieces and other ingredients.


Fairmount Eats, 641 Main St., Hackensack; 201-489-3287.

How to use Costco Wholesale as an ATM

A shopping trip to Costco Wholesale in Hackensack on Friday proved exhausting.

This month, many shoppers were spending their American Express rebate checks.

Editor's note: Costco Wholesale shoppers get rebate checks that far exceed their annual membership fee. Today, I also discuss Starbucks coffee and two more fish dishes.

I received more than $450 in rebates on  purchases at Costco Wholesale, gasoline stations, restaurants and everywhere else with my TrueEarnings credit card from American Express, and they arrived in the form of two checks.

A week apart, I took the checks to my Costco in Hackensack, spent only part of the total and walked away with lots of cash.

That's a no-fee ATM for the frugal shopper.

A cup of Starbucks Blonde Veranda Blend brewed at home.

Hold the milk 

Starbucks describes its Blonde Veranda Blend of whole coffee beans as "mellow and soft," and I can add that the brew is free of any trace of bitterness.

I bought 1 pound for $6.95 during a promotion (regularly $11.95), and asked for it as a Turkish grind, essentially a powder.

I brewed a few cups on Friday, and didn't add any of the usual low-fat milk.

After drinking a cup, I decided it is better than anything I have bought in recent years at Fairway Market in Manhattan and Paramus.

 
More fish dishes

Sliced cucumber with canned fish salad -- pink salmon, yellow fin tuna and sardines with diced celery and apple; Dijon mustard, lime juice and ground cumin. Most of the ingredients are available at Costco Wholesale.

Leftover pan-fried fresh wild cod from Costco Wholesale served over leftover Goya low-sodium black beans with Kirkland Signature Diced Organic Tomatoes.

Go ahead: Make a plate of leftovers

This Greek extra-virgin olive oil from Cyprus turned out to be unusually thick and fruity for such a good value, but extending the turtle-like plastic spout wasn't as easy as it looked, below. A 3-liter can was on sale for $14.99 at the International Food, Wine & Liquor Warehouse in Lodi until Feb. 26.

I had to grasp two sharp, plastic semicircles and pull hard to get the spout to extend fully, front. Even when extended, pouring the oil into a smaller container for use in cooking or to dress salads is a challenge without spilling some.

Putting a meal on the table is much easier when you have a lot of leftovers to work with.

Making 2 cups of organic brown rice or 1 pound of whole-wheat pasta with sardines takes about as much time as lesser amounts.

Make a 10-inch frittata, not an 8-inch one, leaving some for quickly reheating in the microwave for another meal.

You can also make mashed sweet potatoes in a large batch.

We usually get 2 pounds or less of fresh, wild-caught fish fillets from Costco, and even with four fish-lovers to feed, we have leftovers for another day.

Leftovers for breakfast this morning included a frittata with pesto, Chinese takeout vegetables, sauteed cabbage with sweet peppers and Kabocha squash drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil.

Leftover organic brown rice with diced organic tomatoes made a great foundation for two organic eggs with sun-dried tomato and shredded low-fat cheese.

I added leftover Mexican green salsa and tomatoes as a sauce for organic brown rice, and plated them with pan-fried Pacific cod from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

I have leftover black beans with organic diced tomatoes, left, that would go great with leftover brown rice, and all I need to do to complete the meal is to make a salad from pre-washed Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, which goes straight from the package to the bowl.

  
 

'Whole paycheck' is an exaggeration

Last week, fresh, wild-caught whole fish at Whole Foods Market in Paramus included porgy and Spanish mackerel for only $4.99 a pound and $5.99 a pound, respectively.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss Whole Foods Market's reputation for being expensive, enough Chinese takeout for a few meals and The Main Dish in Hackensack.

 

The fresh fish, organic produce, and naturally raised chicken and beef sold at Whole Foods Market are supposed to be so expensive, you'll spend your "whole paycheck" there, if you're not careful.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, as long as you don't rely on Whole Foods for all of your groceries, and shop for sale items and specials.

Last week, two wild-caught whole fish were only $4.99 a pound and $5.99 a pound, excellent buys given the quality of seafood at the Paramus Whole Foods.

Whole Foods also usually stocks frozen organic chicken feet, backs and necks for as little as $2.99 a pound. 

If you eat poultry, they are antibiotic-free, excellent for soup and far better than those mystery parts sold in most supermarkets.

We didn't feel like going out to dinner on Saturday night -- and couldn't agree on where to go, if we wanted to -- so we had food delivered from Zen Kitchen in Teaneck, including jumbo shrimp and vegetables with fresh garlic, and dried sauteed string beans, above (201-837-7322).

The next night, leftover string beans and brown rice were perfect side dishes for leftover wild-caught Canadian flounder in Mexican green salsa.

This morning, I had more Zen Kitchen vegetables with an organic egg and leftover whole-wheat spirals from a container I found in the back of the refrigerator. We order all of our dishes with fresh garlic to avoid the ubiquitous, sodium-laden brown sauce.

 

The zen of takeout

The Chinese meal we had delivered on Saturday night from Zen Kitchen in Teaneck kept on giving at dinner the next night and breakfast this morning.

There may still be some shrimp and vegetables with fresh garlic left.

A large bowl of lentil soup at The Main Dish in Hackensack was $3.95.

Soup to nuts

Today, I stopped at The Main Dish, the restaurant that replaced Naturally Good on Hackensack's quiet Main Street.

The restaurant is open for breakfast and lunch, but closes at 3:30 and isn't open for dinner.

I had a nice, filling bowl of meatless lentil soup for $3.95.

Filling side dish goes with anything

Wild-caught Canadian flounder fillet from Costco Wholesale takes only 5 minutes to cook in bottled Mexican green salsa with organic diced tomatoes once the sauce is bubbling. Here it is served over organic quinoa made in an electric cooker.

Two organic eggs with shredded cheese and Aleppo pepper over quinoa. The yolks taste great when you break them and eat them with the whole grain from Bolivia.

I made the quinoa with a can of diced organic tomatoes to add moisture, but I often drizzle extra-virgin olive oil on the side dish and whatever I'm eating with it, such as this frittata with pesto, tomato slices and sun-dried tomatoes.

I made another pesto-tomato frittata this morning and ate it with the last of the quinoa, which I prepared on Feb. 26. I reheat the quinoa in a microwave for about 2 minutes.

I start the frittata on the stove and finish it under the broiler on a low setting to brown the top and avoid burning the sun-dried tomatoes. I used 2 organic eggs, liquid egg whites, shredded cheese and low-fat milk, a total of about 2 cups.

Breakfast sides included tomato wedges with za'atar thyme mixture and kimchi.

The quinoa I bought from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack has a long name, but couldn't be simpler to prepare.

A serving of Organic Nature's Earthly Choice Premium 100% Whole Grain Quinoa has fewer carbohydrates than white or brown rice or whole-wheat pasta.

Quinoa, a good source of protein, is gluten- and wheat-free.

Especially at breakfast, the quinoa is a great substitute for the bread I no longer eat.

In an electric rice cooker, I combined 2 cups of quinoa, 4 cups of chicken broth or water, one can of organic diced tomatoes and extra-virgin olive oil, and plugged it in.

That lasted me about four days.

The package has two recipes: Mediterranean Quinoa Pilaf and Quinoa Summer Salad, but I haven't tried them.

Qunioa is pronounced KEEN-wah.
  

Is farmed salmon 'better' than wild?

The man on the right was hawking smoked farmed salmon from Maine at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack today, and insisted it is "better" than smoked wild salmon.

Four 4-ounce packages of the farmed Atlantic salmon cost $14.89, only 50 cents less than 1 pound of Costco's Kirkland Signature Wild Alaskan Smoked Sockeye Salmon.

I know Costco Wholesale sells oceans of farmed and wild-caught fish at its warehouse stores in the United States.

And that most of the smoked salmon in its refrigerated cases is artificially colored farmed fish, which eat a far different diet than their wild cousins, which are born in rivers and mature in oceans.

Costco also sells Wild Alaskan Smoked Sockeye Salmon for $15.39 a pound, and the slices are perfect for adding to salads and frittatas, and for eating out of hand, rolled up with a slice of reduced-fat cheese, organic spring mix and Dijon mustard.

Today at the Hackensack Costco, a man selling smoked farmed salmon from True North Salmon Co. in Maine insisted the coloring agents used aren't artificial, and that his farmed product is "better" than wild salmon.

"We know what they eat," he said of the farmed fish.

Then, he told me to get lost, and not speak to other customers about the smoked wild-caught salmon available in another part of the store.

Compare the deep orange-red color of the Kirkland Signature wild-caught salmon, above, to the pale color of the farmed product from True North Salmon Co., below.

When I got home, I opened a package of the smoked wild sockeye salmon, and enjoyed a couple of slices.