Super spicing your home-cooked meals

Fresh Icelandic haddock coated in spices and served with mashed sweet potatoes.

The spice mixture after I added a couple of ounces of Aleppo red pepper.

It didn't take long after our power was restored to shake off Hurricane Sandy, restock the refrigerator and freezer, and get back into preparing quick, nutritious meals at home.

Instead of huddling around the gas fireplace, we've resumed gathering for good breakfasts and dinners in our cozy kitchen.

One of the items I had almost ran out of before the storm hit Oct. 29 was a mixture of bread crumbs and ground spices I've been using for years to coat fish fillets, chicken, pork or beef before baking or roasting them in the oven. 

This is no-recipe cooking at its simplest and quickest, with the juices from the fish or meat rejuvenating the ground spices.

This week, I searched our cupboards and freezer for  spices -- new and old -- and combined them in a big plastic tub stained from all the ground red pepper it has held. 

I decided to streamline the ground-spice mixture by eliminating the bread crumbs and using many more spices than the ones I've long favored from Wick Fowler's 2-Alarm Chili Kit, which I would mail-order  by the case.

Post-Sandy breakfasts included callaloo and saltfish with sweet plantains and boiled green banana, above, and organic eggs with whole-wheat pasta and sardines, below.

I didn't discriminate between new bottles of spices and the old ones I found in the back of the closest, refrigerators or freezer.

I started with Organic No Salt Seasoning, Garlic Powder, Red Pepper Flakes, Ground Black Malabar Pepper, Dried Onion Flakes and other spices from Costco Wholesale.

I found a couple of old containers of Jamaican and Indian curry powders, Chinese Five Spice Powder and White Pepper; Corrado's Ground Ginger and Dried Mint Leaves. 

Korean Red Pepper, Cayenne Pepper and Ground Saigon Cinnamon also went into the mix. I didn't add salt, but had some spice mixtures with salt to add to the plastic tub. 

I can't think of any ground spice that wouldn't be appropriate for the Super Spice Mixture, and you can just continue to replenish the container as you use the mixture. 

For example, you can add a couple of ounces of ground cumin, which is what I did today.

I used the spice mixture to coat fresh, wild-caught haddock fillets from Iceland that I found at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack for $7.99 a pound.

I unwrapped the tray of fish, ran it under tap water, cut it up into smaller pieces and coated both sides with spices in the container, which I keep in the refrigerator.

Or you can spread the spices on a plate and coat the fish that way.

The fillets were ready after about 20 minutes at 350 degrees, and I served them with mashed sweet potatoes and wedges of lime.  

The heating system at the Little Ferry H Mart was broken today.

My wife went to Costco Wholesale in Hackensack today and Tuesday, and I shopped today at the ShopRite in Hackensack and H Mart in Little Ferry, a Korean supermarket, which had lights but no heat.

At Costco, a 10-pound bag of sweet potatoes from North Carolina was $5.99, 10 pounds of organic carrots were $7.99, a 1-pound package of Kirkland Signature Smoked Wild Alaskan Salmon was $15.39.

A 2-pound package of Jarlsberg Light sliced, reduced-fat cheese was $9.99, and 3 pounds of sodium-free California almonds I roast at home were $12.99.

At H Mart, a 15-pound bag of California-grown Kukuho Yellow Label Rice was on sale for $9.99. Other sale items were frozen Greenshell Mussels for $5.99 and a large bunch of fresh spinach for 99 cents.

At ShopRite, I bought the last three packages of antibiotic-free Readington Farms chicken legs and thighs for $1.89 a pound.

Now, the house is filled with the aroma of Curry Chicken.

But I'll be content with whole-wheat rigatoni in bottled marinara with added anchovies, which cook away but leave behind a robust taste; steamed spinach and a salad.   
  

 

Today, this omelet was made with Manchego cheese I didn't throw away.

After Hurricane Sandy knocked our power out on Oct. 29, we could still cook on our gas stove by igniting it with a match.

So, we cooked and ate what we could, supplemented by prepared food from Whole Foods Market; gave away a  lot of items from the freezer and threw away food.

But I didn't discard Tropicana orange juice in sealed cartons; Manchego, grated Pecorino Romano and another hard cheese; two jars of kimchi, olives, capers in brine, homemade pesto, ground spices, bread and tortillas. 

Weight-losing strategies that work for me

Mashed sweet potatoes stand in for fattening white potatoes at any meal.

Sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes. 

Brown rice, not white rice. 

No bread or toast at breakfast, but a bed of whole-wheat pasta for your eggs or egg-white omelet is perfectly fine and filling.

These are some of the strategies I've used to lose weight and keep it off since I gave up bread and pizza at the suggestion of a trainer at my old gym.

From a high of 228 pounds, I've reached a comfortable weight of under 185 pounds.

Organic eggs with manchego cheese and pesto over whole-wheat pasta.

It should go without saying that I don't eat dessert, unless it's ripe fruit with a great of piece cheese or an occasional sorbet.  

I've also stopped eating meat, meaning I can afford to eat a variety of full-fat, reduced-fat and skim-milk cheeses, and whole eggs. 

My overall cholesterol is about 140.

Seafood is a delight -- from Maine lobster to whole wild-caught fish to fillets flown here from Canada, Iceland and other countries.

I eat a lot of organic salad mix, tomatoes and cucumbers. I make canned fish salad with tuna, salmon and sardines, and eat it over salad, not in a sandwich. 

Kashi Trail Mix and and other bars allow me to skip lunch.

 

In the past, a snack would be cheese, smoked wild salmon, canned fish salad and other items, but I'd always eat them tucked inside Syrian pocket bread.

Now, I roll up slices of cheese and smoked salmon, dip them in mustard and eat them out of hand.

A spoonful of peanut or sodium-free almond butter is terrific followed by a spoonful of fig marmalade.

Fig marmalade goes beautifully with slices of manchego, a sheep's milk cheese from Spain. 

The almond butter is great over apple slices.
 

A spoonful of fig marmalade goes well with cheese.

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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.

A fresh look at Corrado's Family Affair

Part of the produce section at Corrado's Family Affair in Clifton.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Are there any other food stores with a more intriguing name than Corrado's Family Affair?

The big, ethnic supermarket on Main Avenue in Clifton -- just a couple of blocks over the Paterson line -- has been packing them in for more than 50 years.

The lure is a lot of food for just a little money, though there are fewer bargains here than in the past.

Jersey Fresh peaches were $1.39 a pound, the same price I paid for peaches at the Paramus ShopRite, but I ate only two of the latter and threw two away.

Two packages of Campari tomatoes were only $1, but they were less than a full pound.

Lousy peaches

After I wrote about buying South Carolina and New Jersey peaches for $1.39 a pound at the Paramus ShopRite -- they turned out to be lousy -- a reader said the new Corrado's supermarket in Wayne had Jersey Fresh fruit for only 99 cents a pound, and they were good.

Today, I went to the original Corrado's in Clifton, where New Jersey peaches were $1.39 a pound, so I bought four and will let them ripen on the counter.

I went for peaches and bought so much more.

Fresh bi-color corn, cold to the touch, were six for $1.99, and after I steamed them, they turned out to be sweet and needed nothing.

One-pound packages of strawberries were $2 each, sweet red peppers were 99 cents a pound and sweet orange peppers were $1.39 a pound.

But green-red peppers appeared wrinkled and old, and I passed, despite the low price.

Two 25-ounce bottles of Don Bruno Vodka Sauce, made with Italian tomatoes but no sugar, were $2.50 each.

Salted codfish

My biggest purchase was six 1-pound packages of Atlantic Pearl Salted Codfish Fillets from Canada at $6.99 each -- far lower than at ShopRite or Fairway Market in Paramus.

The high price of salted cod has prompted us to buy salted Alaskan pollock from Costco Wholesale, but my wife says the taste and texture aren't quite the same.

Corrado's is one of the few stores that carries squid-ink pasta, but an 8.8-ounce package was $5.99, and I decided against buying one.

The original Corrado's opened in 1960, and has expanded across Getty Avenue to a Corrado's shopping center -- with a store for amateur wine makers, garden center, pet store and so much more.

Gasoline, too

There is even a Corrado's gas station on Getty, where regular was $3.56.9 cents a gallon today.

I'd shop at Corrado's Family Affair almost every time I visited Fattal's Syrian Bakery and the Middle Eastern restaurants in nearby South Paterson.

But I stopped going there a few years ago after produce quality slipped, and I saw price stickers placed over expiration dates on organic salad mixes.

Today, Corrado's has liquor, flower and houseware stores inside the main building, as well as one corner devoted to brick oven pizza.

As good as Corrado's prices are on many items, I still had to go to Fattal's today for Al Shark spicy Moroccan sardines, still only 99 cents a can, and a gallon of Merve Aryan Yogurt Drink for $7.79.

I also noticed Corrado's is charging $12.99 a pound for Manchego sheep's milk cheese from Spain -- more than at Whole Foods Market in Paramus or the Hackensack Costco. 

I also couldn't find any antibiotic-free chicken for family members who eat poultry.

Corrado's Family Affair, 1578 Main Ave., Clifton; 973-340-0628.

Web site: www.corradosmarket.com

Fattal's Bakery, 975-77 Main St., Paterson; 973-742-7125.

'Honey, I forgot the milk'

Image via Wikipedia
The imported Pecorino Romano sheep's milk cheese sold at Costco has more sodium than the aged Manchego from Spain, but costs less.

My wife brought home a lot of food from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack on Monday, but forgot organic milk and egg whites.


When I returned on Tuesday for the milk and eggs, I  picked up seven other items, and ended up spending nearly $84.


I'm the only one in the family who doesn't eat meat, so I bought fish: fresh, wild-caught haddock fillets from Iceland for dinner tonight and salted Pacific cod, both $7.99 a pound.


A 2-pound package of strawberries from Mexico were $4.99, and 3 pounds of bananas were the usual $1.39. A dozen 6-ounce cups of Stonyfield Organic Low-Fat Yogurt with Fruit on the Bottom were $7.89.


I wanted a sheep's milk cheese to enjoy with fruit and had two choices, Villacenteno Manchego, an aged cheese from Spain, at $8.29 a pound; and aged Kirkland Signature Pecorino Romano from Italy at around $5.50 a pound (I don't remember the exact price).


I looked at the Nutrition Facts labels and chose the Spanish cheese, which has less sodium than the Pecorino Romano, but different serving sizes made figuring that out a challenge.


The  Manchego went perfectly with slices from a wedge of Spanish fig cake with nuts I picked up at Fairway Market in Paramus the other day.


At Costco, I also picked up another 5-pound box of Sunset Beefsteak Tomatoes for $6.99 (10 tomatoes). They are greenhouse grown and vine ripened.


I prefer the superior taste of Sunset's Campari Tomatoes, but refuse to pay $5.49 for a 2-pound package.


Three half-gallons of Kirkland Signature Organic 1% Milk were $8.99, and the price has held steady for many months. Six 16-ounce containers of Kirkland Signature Real Eggs were $9.59.

Wild salmon with ripe mango

Image via Wikipedia

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.


Image via Wikipedia
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).

Some deep discounts at Fairway Market

The sale circular for Fairway Market in Paramus arrived with the paper today. Deep cuts on prices for Tropicana orange juice and Campari tomatoes take effect Friday and run through Oct. 29.

For the first time, the circular carries a coupon good for $10 off a purchase of $75 before tax, compared with Fairway's previous $10-off-$100-coupon in ValPak mailings. This new coupon may indicate the New York-based chain is having trouble attracting shoppers to its store in the dowdy Fashion Center mall on Route 17. The rent must have been low there for Fairway to ignore Bergen Town Center, where Whole Foods Market and Target (with a full grocery) opened new stores.

Fairway's sale price on Tropicana is $1.79, compared with $1.88 recently at ShopRite. Three 1-pound packages of Campari greenhouse tomatoes are $5, an especially good deal if these are the ones grown without herbicide. Check the label before you buy. Previously, Fairway sold a package for $2.99 or two for $5 on sale.

The great Spanish Manchego sheep's milk cheese is $8.99 a pound -- $4 off -- but that's about what you would pay at Costco. Murray's free-roaming, drug-free chicken isn't on sale.

Fairway makes a big deal over its USDA Prime shell steaks for $8.99 a pound, but doesn't tell you prime only means it is fattier than Choice and Select, the other two grades the federal government uses to classify beef. It also doesn't tell you the animal probably got fat by being confined to a feeding pen, where it received antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products to speed it to the slaughterhouse.

We can only hope the steaks didn't come from a "downer," a sick animal that collapses at the door, but is nevertheless dragged to its death and dismemberment. Bon apetit.