Cooking takes a holiday

At La Pola in West New York.

We've taken a vacation from cooking most of our meals at home.

It began last Thursday, when we battled traffic to buy our Cuban roast pork feast at La Pola Restaurant, a Cuban-sandwich shop in West New York, that we served on Christmas Day. The next night, our usual one dinner out, we had soft-tofu and spring-chicken stews at the Soft Tofu Restaurant in Palisades Park. Sunday night, we ate leftovers from Christmas.

Tuesday night, we treated my niece, her boyfriend and her children to a multicourse Chinese feast at Lotus Cafe in Hackensack, before their return to California the next day. That night, we finished the Lotus Cafe leftovers. Wednesday afternoon, four of us shared a large cold antipasto and a large pepperoni/anchovy pizza -- well-done -- at Brooklyn's in Hackensack, a satisfying cheese-filled meal with a single glass of wine for me. Tonight, we were planning to drive to Paterson for Middle Eastern food if the snow doesn't detour us to a restaurant closer to home.

Last New Year's Eve, the weather kept us in and we prepared curry chicken and lamb chops, and drank wine before watching the ball drop on TV.

We'll eat, talk and shop for food

Please join me for an exploration of some of North Jersey's great ethnic food enclaves.

Initially, I will be conducting walking tours of Middle Eastern and Korean restaurants and food shops that will begin with a great lunch. Later, I'll be adding a Latino food tour, starting with lunch at the best Cuban sandwich shop in Hudson County.

I will need a minimum of four people for each tour. Please contact me for details at vsasson@hotmail.com.

A fresh look at South Paterson

My insatiable fellow food blogger, Jason Perlow, has been exploring the Middle Eastern bakeries, restaurants and food shops in the South Paterson section of Paterson, and I've been remiss in not supplying the link to his reports.

Here it is, finally:

http://offthebroiler.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/nj-dining-al-safa-bab-alhara/

If his photos don't make you salivate, there is just no hope for you. Main Street in South Paterson is one of North Jersey's great food streets, so get out there and explore it.

Keeping peace in the kitchen

A couple of spectacular supermarkets opened recently in North Jersey, but they can't replace Fattal's, the pita bakery and so much more on Main Street in Paterson's South Paterson district.

The pita bread, spinach and meat pies, pastries and prepared food are all terrific at this Syrian emporium, but I also rely on it for the red, coarsely ground Aleppo pepper, canned hummus that is far cheaper than the refrigerated kind and other Middle Eastern food.

Last week, while stocking up on fat Moroccan sardines (99 cents a can), I looked for cans of ful medames (fava beans) from Libano Verde in Lebanon. (Ful is pronounced "fool.") I serve the beans as a salad, with the addition of olive oil, lemon juice, allspice, garlic and scallions or parsley, but you can also heat them up and serve them with a hard-boiled egg. Egyptians use fava beans to make their version of falafel, and it's a lot more interesting than the chickpea falafel you see everywhere.

But as I picked up a can or two of the ready-to-eat fava beans, I noticed subtle differences in the labels. One said "Palestinian Recipe," another read "Lebanese Recipe." There was more, a "Kurdistan Recipe" and an "Egyptian Recipe." I didn't know the humble but flavorful fava bean could be so controversial. So I took home all four.

I tried the Kurdistan Recipe first, finding that the beans were in a tahini sauce. Nice. One morning, I warmed pita halves and stuffed them with hummus, fava beans, organic spring mix, tomato with za'atar (a spice mixture), wild smoked salmon and a portion of a simple omelet. It was a great way to start the day.