Eating in or out, Feast of the Seven Fishes is always the right choice

Fresh-water carp cooling their tails on the fish counter at the H Mart in Fort Lee, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm lucky to eat an Italian-style Feast of the Seven Fishes maybe once a year.

But since I gave up meat and poultry more than five years ago, I usually enjoy a variety of fresh, heart-healthy seafood every week -- fresh, dried or from cans.

If you're concerned about mercury, concentrate on such small fish as sardines and anchovies, which are easy to incorporate into pasta sauce, and avoid large predators, including Chilean sea bass and giant bluefin tuna.

A fish salad with canned light skipjack tuna, pink salmon, sardines and chickpeas -- dressed with fresh lime juice, Dijon mustard, cumin and other spices -- makes a great snack or sandwich.

Most of the ingredients can be found at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro.

Whiting and Alaskan pollack, two cousins of cod, are widely available fresh or prepared at Korean supermarkets.

Pollack also is used in fish sticks and other items at Costco Wholesale.

If you prefer fresh fish, the Teterboro Costco usually offers fillets of cod, haddock and flounder, all wild; as well as wild whole red snapper or farmed branzino from Greece.

Costco also carries antibiotic-free Atlantic salmon fillets.

You can find wild-caught Gulf Shrimp at Whole Foods Market in Paramus ($14.99 a pound when on sale), and sometimes at H Mart.

Unlike Fairway Market in Paramus, the fish-counter workers at Whole Foods will gladly devein large wild shrimp.

A refrigerated case displays sashimi, fish eggs and other raw items opposite the main fish counter at the Korean supermarket in the Linwood Plaza shopping center on Fletcher Avenue in Fort Lee.

A tray of sliced raw salmon and other fish was $21.99.

You can't beat two eggs over easy, broiled whiting and terrific home fries at the Golden Grill, 1379 Queen Anne Road, Teaneck (a bargain at $7 with toast), and don't forget to accent your breakfast with Cholula Hot Sauce from Mexico, below.

Whole fresh whiting from the Fort Lee H Mart ($4.99 a pound), seasoned and pan-fried at home, go well with organic quinoa, organic diced tomatoes and garlic cloves; and sauteed cabbage and sweet peppers.

A center spine makes whole whiting and bigger whole King Whiting easy to eat.

A large Futomaki Roll from Maguro Sushi House, 430 Rochelle Ave., Rochelle Park, includes crab, egg, kanpyo (dried shavings of calabash, a gourd), spinach, cucumber and caviar. Also available in the cafe at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, 350 Engle St. (about $8.60).

Slices of Wild Alaskan Smoked Sockeye Salmon, available year-round at Costco Wholesale, can turn a salad into dinner. The smoked salmon also is terrific in an omelet or as a snack when rolled with a slice of reduced-fat Swiss cheese and dipped in Dijon mustard.

Fillet of cod with roasted peppers was the centerpiece of a restaurant-quality takeout dinner from Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood, below. I plated the fish with a wedge of vegetable frittata and broccoli, leaving chicken dumplings and farfalle a la vodka for another family member.

A complete Meal To Go is $7.99 or $5.99 after 4 p.m., if there are any left.

A fresh fava bean salad from another Meal To Go, and pitted olives from Jerry's in Englewood. A 20-ounce container of olives was only $3.99.

Salted codfish or pollack is a staple at our house, and is especially good added to pasta sauce. Here, salted cod, boiled three times and rinsed to cut the sodium content, is paired with fresh ackee, the national fruit of Jamaica, and plated with leftovers. The dish, Ackee and Saltfish, is prepared with sweet and hot peppers, and usually served with boiled green bananas. 

You can't beat eating breakfast at home

Where can you get a filling and delicious breakfast of organic brown eggs, wild and brown rices, and broccoli with plenty of garlic? At home.

I like the way the cheese in a wedge of homemade frittata with tomato, pesto and smoked wild salmon melts into the organic brown rice when re-heated for a few minutes in the microwave.

Editor's note: I love dinner leftovers for the boost they give me at breakfast. Today, I also discuss picking up the last few items I need for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Eating out is expensive, and you don't always know what you're eating or how it's prepared.

Why stop for one of those egg-and-mystery meat sandwiches when you can buy preservative- and antibiotic-free bacon at Trader Joe's that microwaves in minutes?

Skipping breakfast at home is especially foolhardy, because it deprives you of taking advantage of those great dinner leftovers to help launch your day.

An important component of my weight-loss strategy is to have a filling breakfast at home, allowing me to avoid all those unhealthy temptations at Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts.

And I can skip lunch by relying on snack bars from Kashi and Nature's Bakery (try the terrific Fig Bar available at Costco Wholesale). 

Few places offer such breakfasts as the eggs with fried or broiled whiting you can order at the Golden Grill on Queen Anne Road in Teaneck, where a bottle of hot sauce stands ready on every table.

But when eating breakfast at home, you can always plate a piece of leftover fish -- such as the fried haddock, onions and sweet peppers we had the other night -- with a wedge of frittata and pasta or rice.

Coscto Wholesale in Hackensack was a pleasure in the first hour it was open today, above and below. Maybe the bad weather kept pre-Thanksgiving shoppers away.

Today at Costco

The doors were thrown open well before 10 this morning at the Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, and it was a pleasure for me and other early shoppers to pick up the last few items for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.

There was no line at the Seafood Road Show, and I went overboard, asking for five Alaskan King Crab legs and claws at $19.99 a pound.

They weighed in at nearly 3 pounds or $58.57.

I also picked up a 4.60-pound bag of wild-caught Littleneck Clams for $3.49 a pound or $16.05. 

Among other items, I purchased 10 pounds of organic carrots for $7.99, and 6 pounds of Bosc Pears for $5.99.

As I headed for the exit of the parking lot around 10:20 this morning, I noticed a line of cars going out to the street as lazy shoppers were trying to get spots closest to the doors.

I saw the same phenomena when I visited the Wayne Costco on Monday.

At Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood, the Meals To Go went fast today.

We're sorry

This afternoon, at Jerry's Gourmet & More on South Dean Street in Englewood, the parking lot was full, but the refrigerated case holding Meals To Go was empty.

An employee explained the store prepared a ton of dinners, only to see them sold out during the morning hours.

The restaurant-quality dinners of fish, pork and chicken with pasta, vegetables and other side dishes are only $7.99 or $5.99 after 4 p.m.

Tasting and cooking notes -- in pictures

One of my favorite breakfasts got healthier when I asked the Golden Grill, on Queen Anne Road in Teaneck, to grill or broil fresh whiting fillets, which are normally fried.

Frozen sea scallops from Costco Wholesale were a little tough and a few contained fine grit. I made them with organic diced tomatoes, white wine and lemon juice.

I made a faux Cuban sandwich for my son, above, using a crusty baguette from Balthazar Bakery in Englewood. I had only two of the four ingredients, roast pork and Swiss cheese, and no heated press. My son doesn't like mustard, so I used Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce, and melted the cheese under the broiler, below.

I used pre-washed organic spring mix to garnish a sandwich of canned fish salad with sweet pepper, onion, garlic, apple, Dijon mustard, lemon juice and ground cumin.

A fluffy 10-inch frittata, above and below, was made with 7 organic whole eggs, smoked wild salmon, shredded cheese, low-fat organic milk, fresh and sun-dried tomatoes, and no-salt organic seasonings. I started it on top of the stove and finished it under the broiler, and served it with orgnaic brown rice and sweet plantains. Almost all of the ingredients came from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

At Whole Foods Market in Paramus, a briny Lobster and Corn Bisque is made without heavy cream. A small, 8-ounce cup is $3.74, including tax.

A 16-ounce cup of Organic Indian Chai, a spiced black tea, is $1.93 at Whole Foods.

Whole Foods' gorgeous antipasti will set you back $9.99 a pound. I'm happy with the assorted Italian olives with whole garlic for $3.99 a pound at Jerry's in Englewood.

A perennial favorite in our home is Valentina Mexican Hot Sauce (Extra Hot), with a black label, which we buy at Hackensack Market on Passaic Street.

An earlier version of canned-fish salad went great with Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, cucumber, tomato, kimchi and za'atar thyme mixture.

I cook ahead hot cereal, pasta with sardines and other dishes in larger than unusual quantities to cut the time it takes to put a meal on the table. Here, fresh blackberries and low-fat milk were added to reheated 10-grain cereal and rough-cut oatmeal with pignoli nuts, dried cherries, black chia seeds and goji berries.