Food photos from Woodbridge to the West Side of Manhattan

Lactose Free Milk at Wegmans Food Market is 10 cents more than at ShopRite.

Wegmans has one of the lowest prices on bananas, but doesn't beat Costco Wholesale.

At nearly 140,000 square feet, Wegmans in Woodbridge seems to go on and on.

Wegmans offers enough prepared food to feed an army. 

Fresh, wild-caught fish fetch some of the highest prices around.

Wegmans Organic Chicken. Drumsticks are $2.99 a pound.

Canned vegetables are 49 cents each.

Premium blended orange juice is only $1.99 for a 64-ounce half-gallon.

Wegmans cheese, dried fruit and nuts would make a great dessert.

A Japanese family enjoying lunch at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater.

One of the stands in the food court of the Japanese supermarket.

Dishes offered at the Whole Foods Market in Manhattan's Time Warner Center.

At a Gourmet Garage near Lincoln Center, Chilean Sea Bass is $28.99 a pound.

Despite the price, Golden Pineapples sold out, but the sign stayed behind.

Gourmet Garage charges $4.99 for 5 ounces of Earthbound Farm Spring Mix. At Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, customers get a 16-ounce package for the same price.

A new dish at So Gong Dong in Palisades Park is Vegetable Bibimbap served on a stone plate. Season to taste with Korean red-pepper paste or gochujang from a squeeze bottle.

Steam rising from the signature soft-tofu stew, which comes with a stone bowl of white rice. All entrees are served with four side dishes, including two kimchis.

At So Gong Dong, bibimbap also comes with ground beef or with squid, but other restaurants serve the dish topped with a raw or fried egg.

The Palisades Park ShopRite is the only supermarket I know with a big tropical-fish tank.

The fattiest fish is the best fish

Whole sea bass, okra and other vegetables, cooked with sake and lime juice.

We need Omega-3 fatty acids to make our bodies work properly, and there is no more delicious source than wild-caught fish, including salmon and cod.


But you don't have to buy the most expensive fish to get the heart-healthy benefits of Omega-3s, according to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.


A seafood nutrition chart shows a 3.5-ounce portion of fresh or smoked black cod, also called sable fish, contains 1,800 milligrams of Omega-3s, but they are among the priciest selections on a menu or in the market.


You can get 500 milligrams of Omega-3s from the same portion of sole, 470 mg from Alaska pollock  and 450 mg from rockfish.


Pacific oysters


Among shellfish, a 3.5-ounce portion of Pacific oysters contains 1,400 mg of Omega-3s.


In January, I ordered black cod at Maritime Parc, an expensive seafood restaurant in Jersey City, but we enjoy Alaska pollock at home at least once a week.


This past Sunday, I found Pacific rockfish on sale at Whole Foods in Paramus for $8.99 a pound (40% off) and bought it to add variety to the wild-caught fillets I usually buy at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack -- Pacific True Cod, haddock and sole.


Pearly white rockfish


We fried some of the rockfish, and coated the rest in a mixture of bread crumbs and chili spices. 


The fillets on ice were reddish, but they turned pearly white in the oven and broke into big flakes when we ate them.


For breakfast this morning, I enjoyed leftover rockfish and  brown rice with cabbage and saltfish (salted pollock) my wife made for dinner last night.

This fatty sashimi comes from a farmed fish and costs $79.99 a pound.

Alaska King or Chinook salmon -- usually the most expensive kind -- provides 1,700 mg of Omega-3s, but you can get 1,200 mg from the same portion of Sockeye and 1,100 from Coho salmon.


A 3.5-ounce portion of Alaska Pink salmon provides 1,300 mg of Omega-3s, but I've never seen fresh or frozen fillets of this fish in New Jersey.


A can of Pink salmon provides 1,100 mg of Omega-3s, compared to 1,400 from a can of much more expensive Sockeye or Red salmon.


Sustainable seafood


Alaska says it is a major source of sustainable seafood -- seafood that is managed and fished using practices that ensure there will always be more to catch in the future.


It's a commitment that dates to 1959, "when Alaskans wrote sustainability into their [state] Constitution," according to the marketing institute.


Canned-fish salad


I buy canned Pink salmon at Costco in Hackensack, and mix it with canned yellow-fin tuna and sardines, plus diced celery, sweet pepper or onion, for a fish salad flavored with Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice and powdered cumin.


Costco also sells frozen Alaska Sockeye salmon fillets, smoked and sliced Sockeye salmon, and salted pollock fillets, which usually are boiled to reduce the salt content before the fish is used in cooking.


Boycott bluefin tuna


Last Saturday, during a visit to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, I stopped at the refrigerated fish case and stared at the veins of fat in a small piece of raw oh-toro -- the prized belly meat from the endangered giant bluefin tuna.


The price: $79.99 a pound. And this piece came from a farmed bluefin raised in Spain. 


I'm boycotting bluefin tuna, which is high in harmful mercury and which has been driven to the brink of extinction by the Japanese.


I'd rather get my Omega-3s elsewhere.


More information about Alaska seafood is available at the following link: Wild, Natural & Sustainable


Everything you want to know about Omega-3s is at the following WebMD link: The ABCs of Omega-3s

Tasting and shopping notes

I sliced six or seven pieces of giant bluefin-tuna sashimi as part of my dinner last night and wasn't disappointed. Veined with fat, the raw fish just melted away in my mouth with a minimum

of chewing. Heavenly. I also had small, green obah leaves (wrap for the sashimi), seasoned fish eggs, cooked eel sushi and roll, and a triangle of seaweed-wrapped cooked rice stuffed with spicy cod roe, all from Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, where I bought the tuna Sunday ($62.99 a pound). See earlier posts.


Clementines from Spain and black figs grown in the U.S. have begun appearing in markets, but at higher prices than I remember from last year. I haven't seen clementines for less than $9.99 for a 5-pound box. My wife bought domestic clementines for half that at ShopRite in Englewood, but they are sour and full of pits. An employee of H Mart in Englewood said the price of the imported clementines will fall next month.


I bought a box of 24 black figs at H Mart in Little Ferry yesterday for $9.99. I saw then for 99 cents each at Mitsuwa Marketplace that morning as I gathered items for my sashimi and trimmings dinner. The figs I bought were ripe and sweet, and I'm storing them in the fridge. I want to try them with Manchego sheep milk's cheese and almonds for dessert one night or split open and drizzled with honey.

I have been buying California rice for two or three years now to avoid rice from the South, where it is sometimes grown on old cotton fields laced with arsenic, which was used to kill the boll weevil, a beetle, according to Consumer Reports. The problem is many bags of rice don't specify where it is grown. That's not the case at H Mart in Little Ferry, which has a large selection of California rice in all sizes, but it can be expensive, especially after a price spike last year.

Yesterday, I picked up a 20-pound bag of Kokuho yellow rice that was over a price sign of $19.99, one of the lowest I saw, and it rang up as $12.99 (it was on sale). The reference to yellow rice may have something to do with the yellow seal on the bag. The rice looked the same as other brands when we prepared it.

Pushing and shoving for giant bluefin tuna

Image via Wikipedia

Hundreds of Mitsuwa Marketplace customers watched in awe today as more than a dozen workers reduced a giant bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Spain to sushi and small blocks of sashimi.

The narrator, a Long Island commercial fisherman named Michael, said the dressed fish -- minus head, tail and innards -- weighed 680 pounds, the largest ever at the Edgewater Japanese supermarket's annual "cutting performances." The total weight was around 1,000 pounds.

Michael is clearly fascinated with this magnificent creature and he pointed out how the giant tuna can retract its fins into "pockets" for further streamlining. This tuna was caught by rod and reel as it was gorging itself  in preparation for migration to warmer waters, so it was near its maximum weight. It was then bled and immersed in icy water before being flown to the U.S.

They grow so large, the Japanese refer to them as "swimming buffalo," he said.

Michael said giant bluefin tuna -- the biggest tuna species --  contain beneficial Omega-7 fatty acids and that pieces of oh-toro, well-marbled belly meat, are sold in Manhattan sushi restaurants for $12 to $16 a piece. At last year's performance, the oh-toro cost about $60 a pound and I bought a quarter pound  for about $15. The price this year was $62.99 a pound, and I had to take more than a half pound for about $33.


As the fish was being cut into smaller pieces, weighed, labeled and wrapped, people in the crowd started pressing forward and reaching over others for packages from individual workers, signaling a breakdown of the system where people lined up to make purchases. I even saw one worker give free, unwrapped fish to people he seemed to know. Michael said that on Saturday, when two giant bluefin tunas were cut up, he witnessed a shoving match between two men.

Also this year, one section of the tuna's large collar was offered for sale, and I grabbed it for $30. They gave it to me in a large garbage bag with a price label affixed. The piece was about 21 inches long and weighed close to 9 pounds, but when I got it home, it didn't fit into my pan. I roasted it for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees and I've never seen fish give up so much oil, which dripped onto the bottom of the oven and started smoking.

I ate some of the medium- to dark-red flesh raw before putting the collar into the oven. When cooked, it was a little easier to remove the meat and I harvested about two pounds. The kitchen was a mess, with oil and bits of fish, cartilage and skin all over the place. Buying the collar turned out to be a mistake. Luckily, the harried cashier rang it up for 30 cents, instead of $30.

Sushi with cracked pepper, olive oil and kimchi

I continue to work my way through that great block of smoked-mackerel sushi from Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater. See post, "Back in the food-shopping game."

Yesterday, I opened the two packets that came in the box and looked over the inserts from Komego, all in Japanese, which I don't read. I poured the cracked peppercorns and extra-virgin olive oil in separate dishes. This is different. I've always associated sushi and sashimi with soy sauce and wasabi.

This fatty, Omega-3 rich mackerel with rice is good enough on its own, but takes on extra dimensions when dipped first in the oil and then pungent cracked pepper.This morning, I had two more slices and paired one with

Image via Wikipedia

crunchy cabbage kimchi before popping it into my mouth. Delish.

Tasting and shopping notes

Image via Wikipedia

The block of smoked-mackerel sushi from Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater didn't disappoint. (See previous post.)  In fact, my wife, who squirms at the the thought of eating raw fish, loved the slices she tried. I ate mine without wasabi or soy sauce and they nicely set up our dinner of frozen wild sockeye salmon in a light Asian sauce.

I placed the frozen salmon (from Costco) in a glass plate set atop my steamer (it didn't fit inside), in a shallow pool of olive and sesame oils, fish sauce and cheap sake. I sprinkled salt on the fillets, rubbed them with coarse red Aleppo pepper and steamed them about 20 minutes for medium, serving the fish with leftover rice and peas, salad and pita bread.

The latest batch of Aleppo pepper I purchased from Fattal's on Main Street in Paterson is noticeably darker than what I had and noticeably spicier, a good thing. I keep it in a plastic container in the freezer and sprinkle it over eggs, fish and chicken, but wonder if the intensity fades over time.

I forgot to mention I bought aged Manchego sheep-milk's cheese from Spain at Costco the other day. The price, $8.29 a pound, is 70 cents less than the sale price at Fairway Market in Paramus and several dollars less than the regular price. Storage tip: Trim off the inedible rind, slice the wedge into three pieces and wrap each in plastic wrap before placing them in a freezer bag in the fridge. This also works with a large wedge of Reggiano Parmigiano.

North Jersey markets are running some good sales, starting today.  

Fairway Market has three pounds of herbicide-free Campari tomatoes for $5, three heads of organic romaine for $2.99 and Columbia supremo coffee for $4.99 a pound. Stop & Shop is reprising its sale on drug-free Australian shoulder lamb chops, $3.69 a pound for three pounds or more. And two markets on Railway Avenue in Paterson, El Campesino and El Rancho, are selling limes or lemons at 10 for 99 cents, 20 pounds of Canilla rice for $3.99, three cups of La Yogurt (6 ounces) for 99 cents, Lactaid milk for $4.99 (96 ounces) and Hass avocados, 2 for 99 cents.

If you think Paterson is going too far for food, stop first at Aleppo Restaurant, at Main and Thomas streets, or Hummus Restaurant across the street for a nice lunch, pick up Syrian bread and spices at Fattal's down the strteet, then go food shopping. Hungry food shoppers spend more, research has shown.

Back in the food-shopping game

Image via Wikipedia

I'm back to food shopping after a few days off and really enjoying it. I am going to try and avoid visiting a store just because it has a sale. See earlier post, "Are we sick of food shopping yet?"

We go through a ton of Halloween candy every year, so I headed to Costco in Hackensack for my weekly trip. I picked up 600 to 700 pieces of candy, plus 100% whole grain bread, smoked wild salmon, ravioli stuffed with cheese and spinach, and organic salad greens -- all at great prices. That was yesterday.

Today, I drove to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater for its autumn food fair, sampling ramen made by Master  Kenji Chiba, owner of a Tokyo noodle-soup shop, Chibaki Ya. I learned that ramen broth isn't always made with pork. This one takes six to seven hours to prepare from fish and chicken. The fair ends Sunday. Nice.

To take home, I bought one of my favorites, a log of smoked mackerel sushi imported from Japan ($29). It comes wrapped in a leaf, inside a box. I also bought two scrumptious, freshly made rice balls with fish roe, wrapped in seaweed. I wolfed those down as soon as I got home. My third purchase were Kobe-style pancakes stuffed with sweet bean paste, made on the spot.

After I left Mitsuwa, I stopped at Trader Joe's, which is just down the road, picking up drug- and preservative-free Applegate Farms cold cuts, two packages of uncured, preservative-free hot dogs; and sliced yogurt cheese with jalapenos.

I also purchased a T.J.'s five-gallon, reusable, insulated bag to replace one I lost, at a bargain price of $1.99. The store doesn't give you any credit for bringing reusable bags, but almost makes up for that with this low price.

Image via Wikipedia

Is your sushi fresh or frozen?

Bluefin-tuna sushi, front, and cooked eel at Hiura in Fort Lee (2013).

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor


You might be surprised to learn the pristine slice of fish that melts in your mouth at a good sushi parlor had been frozen, along with all the other raw fish you eat.

Consumer Reports On Health urges sushi- and shashimi-lovers to "make sure that the fish was frozen before serving, because that kills the parasites sometimes found in fish. (The Food and Drug Administration requires restaurants to take that step, though enforcement can be lax.)"

It says you should prepare sushi at home only using frozen fish.

In other words, it is illegal for a U.S. restaurant to serve fish raw unless it has been frozen first. The publication echoed an article about sushi I read in 2004 in The New York Times' Dining In/Dining Out section, "Sushi Fresh from the Deep ... the Deep Freeze."

The June 2009 Consumer Reports newsletter also says consumers "should choose pieces made with low-mercury fish, such as salmon or shrimp," though doesn't mention that the vast majority of salmon served as sushi is artificially colored farmed fish. 

Tuna and mercury

Tuna, also a popular fish for sushi, has a high mercury content.

I try to limit my raw tuna consumption to the once-a-year carving of giant (frozen) bluefin tunas at Mitsuwa Marketplace, the Japanese supermarket in Edgewater. 

Last year, I purchased a quarter of a pound of the best belly meat ($60 a pound) and enjoyed seven slices of meltingly beautiful, marbled fish at home.

I like raw fluke and other "white" fish as sushi and sashimi. 

Hiura Restaurant

My favorite Japanese restaurant for sushi is Hiura in Fort Lee, a small, family run BYO. Though expensive, the sushi, sashimi, sea urchin, fish eggs and cooked dishes have never disappointed.

If you are going to buy sushi at the supermarket, H Marts in Englewood, Little Ferry and Ridgefield have their own sushi sections and a fourth market from the Korean chain is slated to take over the space once occupied by Kings in Fort Lee. 

Avoid the stuff sold in ShopRite. The sushi at the new Whole Foods Market in Paramus is excellent, but prices are high, compared with H Mart.