At H Mart, fish dinner for four can cost under $10, free seafood samples

On Sunday, my wife baked five fresh wild-caught whole porgy with olive oil, fresh lime juice, onions, tomatoes, sweet peppers and fresh garlic.

Our side dish was cabbage sauteed with sweet peppers.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss food shopping at H Mart in Little Ferry, ShopRite in Paramus and Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, and the meals you can assemble with ingredients from them.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I never know what I'll find when I shop for fresh fish on the weekends at the H Mart in Little Ferry or how low the price will be.

On Sunday, I found whole porgy nestled in ice for only $1.79 a pound, and five of them rang up at $8.40.

While I waited for the fish to be cleaned and scaled, I chatted with other customers and went over to tables offering free seafood samples.

I also picked up nearly 2 pounds of Gaichoy or Baby Mustard Greens on sale for only 78 cents a pound with a store card.

Today, my wife prepared them for dinner with olive oil, chopped fresh garlic, sea salt and Organic No-Salt Seasoning, all from Costco Wholesale.

At H Mart in Little Ferry, free weekend seafood samples are conveniently placed near the fresh-fish counter to give customers something to do while their catch is being cleaned. Samples include seafood pancakes, foreground; boiled octopus, smoked farmed salmon and broiled eel.

The Korean supermarket at 260 Bergen Turnpike in Little Ferry also sells a wide array of dried seafood, above and below, and I expect many of them are for use in soups or stews.

Customers can only hope H Mart management will decide to renovate what is the shabbiest store in the chain.

ShopRite in Paramus

At ShopRite in Paramus on Tuesday, I bought a large Golden Pineapple for $2.99, and two 15-ounce containers of Smart Balance Light Spread made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil on sale for $2.99 each, a discount of 60 cents.

Smart Balance has gone on sale for as little as $1.89 with a store card, but I haven't seen that repeated in many months.

At ShopRite in Paramus, 26-ounce bottles of Colonna Pasta Sauce are on sale for 69 cents each, but the Garlic & Onion and Meat-Flavored contain high fructose corn syrup. Vodka Sauce lists heavy cream as the second largest ingredient. I'll pass on all three.

The 40-ounce bottle of Victoria Marinara is $8.49 at the Paramus ShopRite, 224 Route 4 east, but you can get two 40-ounce jars of the same sauce for $8.99 at Costco Wholesale on South River Street in Hackensack.

I continue to perfect 10-inch egg-white omelets, cooking fresh spinach in a little oil in a separate pan before transferring it to the omelet and folding it. Other ingredients include smoked wild salmon and reduced-fat sliced Swiss cheese from Costco, which also sells 100% egg whites.

A big breakfast omelet stuffed with smoked salmon and spinach, served with leftover organic brown rice and broccoli, allows me to skip lunch.

This morning, I prepared an organic whole-egg omelet with salted fish, fresh spinach and Mateo's Gourmet Salsa, the last from Costco Wholesale, above and below.

The omelet is ready to be folded.

More wonderful things to eat from stores in northern New Jersey

Manchego 100% sheep's milk cheese at Costco Wholesale is aged twice as long, but costs much less per pound than the version sold at Whole Foods Market.

Colavita Whole Wheat Capellini with langostino in vodka sauce.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Costco Wholesale in Hackensack sells more than 50 cheeses, but the 100% sheep's milk cheese from Spain has a special place in my heart.

I first enjoyed the rich, distinctive taste of manchego as part of a dessert in the 1970s after a meal of rabo de toro -- tail of the bull -- in a Madrid restaurant. 

I had spent the late afternoon watching bullfights in Madrid's famous ring, Las Ventas.

The dessert is Manchego y Membrillo -- sheep's milk cheese and quince paste -- recommended by author James Michener in "Iberia."

In the 1980s, on another trip to Spain, I brought home a 2.2 kilogram wheel of Manchego, hidden in my luggage.

I stopped going to bullfights decades ago, and no longer eat meat.

But I can still enjoy manchego from Costco Wholesale, and now pair it with fig marmalade from Lebanon, just one of the many Middle Eastern products sold at Fattal's Bakery, 975-77 Main St., Paterson.

Salloum Bros. Fig Marmalade is accented with anise.

Slices of manchego and a big spoonful of fig marmalade go wonderfully with the unsalted almonds I buy at Costco and roast at home.

Or you can pair the cheese with crisp apple slices or slice it thinly for use in an open-face omelet or with eggs sunny side up.

Earthbound Farm's Organic Half & Half is a great way to end a meal.

Our dinner one night this week was thawed, fully cooked langostino, Colavita Whole Wheat Capellini and bottled Paesana Vodka Sauce, plus a salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Half & Half (Baby Spinach and Spring Mix).

Langostino tails, from a crustacean that falls somewhere between shrimp and lobster, are sold frozen.

I didn't use a recipe. I just assembled the meal:

First, I heated up the sauce, adding some red-pepper flakes and several ounces of extra-virgin olive oil.

Second, I cooked the capellini until it was al dente in just enough unsalted water to cover the pasta. 

The 3-minute cooking time on the Colavita package is optimistic.

Then, I drained the cooked pasta and transferred it and the thawed langostino tails to the sauce, mixing them well over low heat.

The wild-caught, preservative-free langostino, vodka sauce and salad mix are from Costco. The whole wheat pasta came from Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood.

Baskets full of merchandise left behind by spoiled Costco customers who change their minds, but who are too lazy to return the items to where they found them.

Part of a mural at Trader Joe's Chelsea store in Manhattan.

As much as I like Colavita's imported whole-wheat pasta, the whole-wheat pasta from Trader Joe's has several advantages.

Trader Joe's pasta is made from organic durum whole wheat, it contains no sodium, it has more fiber and it costs 10 cents less for a 16-ounce package.

Today, at the Paramus Trader Joe's, I compared the nutrition labels of whole-wheat pasta and Trader Joe's Italian pasta made from durum semolina.

The major difference is more than twice as much fiber in the whole-wheat product.

Two ounces of whole-wheat spaghetti, bottom label, has 5 grams of dietary fiber.

I also stopped at Fairway Market in Paramus, but didn't buy anything beyond what I went for: 3 pounds of coffee from Colombia and the Dominican Republic for $6.99 or $7.99 a pound.

With small pieces of baguette, I sampled a few of the expensive extra-virgin olive oils the store sells.

I saw fresh wild king salmon for $15.99 a pound, compared to $12.99 a pound at Costco.

A Manchego cheese aged for 15 months was $18 a pound, compared to Costco's 6-month Manchego for $8.29 a pound.

Some of the cheeses are so expensive, signs give the price for one-quarter pound, not a full pound, as in most other stores.  

I saw Sunset-brand Campari Tomatoes in a 1-pound package for a high $3.89. 

The store did have 3 packages of grape tomatoes for $5, but many of them contained crushed tomatoes and I passed. 

Jerry's takeout container is marked "MICROWAVABLE SAFE."

We continue to enjoy restaurant-quality Meals To Go from Jerry's in Englewood, but never heat them up in the plastic Anchor-brand takeout container.

I usually get the multi-course meals on Wednesdays after 4 p.m., when they are marked down to $5.99 from $7.99.

As we've done for many years, we plate the food before heating it up in the microwave to avoid a potential transfer of chemicals from the plastic container.

A red-snapper dinner from Jerry's was heated up on a plate, never in the plastic container.