Follow the tracks to great food buys

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I've enjoyed shopping and eating in Paterson's Middle Eastern food bazaar for nearly 30 years, but haven't paid much attention to the city's bustling, year-round Farmers' Market.

Today, I met Chuck, one of my loyal readers, at the market on East Railway Avenue and he led me to some remarkable food bargains, most of which are gone by Sunday. Besides produce stores, there are butchers, a fish market, restaurants and non-food merchants. Parking is free.

My first stop was Eastern Groceries Inc. at 459 E. Railway Ave. (look for the number, the name on the door says something else). None of the following prices are typos.

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 I picked up a dozen 5.3-ounce cups of Stonyfield Farm organic, fat-free Oikos, Greek-style yogurt for $2 -- that's less than 17 cents each. They were stamped with a date of Feb. 8, meaning we will have about two weeks to finish them. A simple drizzle of honey turns this yogurt into a great dessert.

Earthbound Farm organic heirloom lettuce leaves were $1 for 7 ounces -- or $2.28 a pound. Organic spring mix was $1.99 for 12 ounces -- or $2.65 a pound -- far less than at Costco. Both had use-by dates of Feb. 10. A 5-pound box of Spanish clementines was $3.49 -- by far the lowest price of the season.

A 1-pound package of large, Sunset-brand, herbicide-free tomatoes was $1.50. A bunch of radishes was 50 cents. I had to pass up a lot of  other bargains -- my refrigerator and freezer are bulging as it is. 

Despite the sub-freezing weather, there was a beautiful display of produce outside Brother's, 327 E. Railway Ave., but all I needed were lemons (four for $1). Olives are only $1.99 a pound. This store also carries a good selection of Middle Eastern food, such as imported tahini sauce, fava beans, hummus and so forth.

Then I drove over to Main Street, lined with Turkish and Middle Eastern restaurants, shawarma shops and markets, to shop at Nouri's and Fattal's bakeries, two longtime Syrian rivals I have patronized for decades.They are at 999 and 975-77 Main St., respectively, and both have their own parking lots and carry so much more than just bread.

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At Nouri's, I found three liters of Greek extra-virgin olive oil for $17.99, among bottles and tins  from Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. At Fattal's, I picked up five cans of Moroccan sardines in spicy oil at 99 cents each and large, store-made spinach pies ($8.99 for six).

A big thank you to Chuck.

Restaurant notes

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Our meal at Wondee's last night was as good as ever, but I wondered about all the empty tables. Two tables were occupied when we entered the BYO Thai restaurant in Hackensack and a family arrived as we were preparing to leave. The falling snow and forecasts of more, much more, must have discouraged people from venturing out.

Five of us feasted on steamed pork-and-shrimp dumplings, won ton soup, crunchy duck-and-fruit salad, fried chicken wings with a sweet-sour sauce, Cantonese-style pork with vegetables and a whole, steamed red snapper with hot chilies and garlic. Delicious.

I had had my heart set on dinner at Hummus, a Turkish place in South Paterson, because we had to go to a store there for a long, white robe my son needed for his Christmas pageant today. But as the snow fell, I dashed out alone and drove to Nouri's, a Syrian bakery and grocery store with electronics, musical instruments, clothing, cookbooks and more. I found just what I was looking for -- a simple, white, pullover robe made in Aleppo, Syria (photo), for $15. When I left, I briefly thought about ordering takeout from Hummus, then drove home.

On Thursday, I had a big lunch at Aleppo Restaurant,  across the street from Hummus. I ordered pureed lentil soup flavored with cumin and accompanied by half a lemon, fried kibbe, and a spicy dip called muhammara. I like to squeeze lemon onto the ground meat in my kibbe -- also called torpedos -- after biting off the end. I brought home pocket bread and two kibbe, making sandwiches with my homemade hummus and sharing them with my wife.

Aleppo Restaurant, 939 Main St., Paterson; 973-977-2244;
open seven days.

Hummus Restaurant,  942 Main St., Paterson, 
973-247-0066;
hummusturkishrestaurant.com

Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 296 Main St., 201-883-1700; 
parking in rear
http://www.wondeenj.com/

Bountiful meal recalls my roots

When we walked into Aleppo Restaurant in Paterson just past noon today, a long table had been set with the classic Syrian meal of small plates called maza -- 11 appetizers, bread and pickles that would have made a great meal in themselves.

Me and my wife, Marjorie, were joined by seven others: Jason Perlow; his wife, Rachel; and readers of this blog and Jason's Off The Broiler ode to great restaurant food.

The restaurant first opened on the other side of Main Street -- in the Middle Eastern bazaar known as South Paterson -- and now occupies the clean, simply decorated rooms of a failed Turkish restaurant, Kafe Teria. It's named after the city in northern Syria where my Jewish parents were born and my grandfather was a pastry maker.

The food we ate was beautifully seasoned with cumin, allspice, tamarind, mint, lemon and Aleppo pepper. We had hummus, muhammara, labaneh, meat arayes, raw kibbe, sambusak with meat or cheese, fried kibbe, tabbouleh, a soupy dish of fava beans and another of yogurt with diced cucumbers. Wonderful.

But there was more: entrees of eggplant and squash stuffed with meat and rice; an extraordinary kabob and bread soaked with cherry sauce; small dumplings packed with meat in a yogurt sauce; and a mixed grill with shish kebab, kufta kebab and chicken, with hot peppers, tomato and onion.

We walked off the meal by visiting Fattal's and Nouri's, the rival Syrian bakeries and markets. Then we returned to the restaurant for dessert, a honey-soaked cake with walnuts and strong Arabic coffee.

The only sour note were the no-shows, four or five people who failed to keep their word that they would attend. Of course, that meant we took home containers of leftovers, enough food for at least a couple of delicious meals.

On Sunday morning, the fava beans and the dips, with the addition of a couple of ounces of smoked wild salmon (Costco) and olives and warmed pita (Fattal's), made a great breakfast. For dinner, I'll polish off the fried kibbe, kufta kabob and stuffed squash with more pita and a salad.

For vivid pictures of our lunch, please click on the following link to Jason's blog:

http://offthebroiler.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/otb-economic-stimulus-dinner-ii-no-mezze-left-behind/#more-2971

Here's a link with more information about Aleppo, Syria, which I visited in the late 1970s.

http://www.atlastours.net/syria/aleppo.html

(This post was revised on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009.)

Focus on Middle Eastern food

It's not too often I can recommend a food article in The Record of Hackensack, where the 30-year-olds demonstrate their limited knowledge of northern New Jersey every day.

But today, restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung does a decent job on what she now calls the "Middle Eastern market" on and off Main Street in Paterson's South Paterson section -- the bakeries, restaurants and other shops I have been patronizing for decades. She stops at Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Turkish businesses, including a couple of newish ones I'd like to explore. This article comes only a couple of months after she incorrectly described the same area as a "Turkish enclave" and "Little Istanbul."

Unfortunately, she ignores Corrado's Family Affair, the ethnic supermarket with an incredible bread aisle, just over the Paterson border on Main Avenue in Clifton.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/A_feast_for_the_senses.html

It's one in a series called "Progressive Dining," a phrase that has never been defined by the reporter. As usual, she manages to eat a lot of food in just a couple of hours.

North Jersey's pita bread wars

I have been eating pita bread all my life and can recall the enterprising salesman who hawked bread baked in Brooklyn from a baby carriage he pushed through the sun-splashed streets when we summered in Bradley Beach, part of the annual migration of Sephardic Jews. We called it Syrian bread back then and the loaves were a foot across.

When I moved to North Jersey three decades ago, I naturally gravitated to the Middle Eastern food bazaar in the South Paterson section of Paterson that straddles the Clifton border. As the years passed, great pita bread bakeries came and went, including Amir's, which formed the bread by hand and turned out a deliciously chewy loaf that stood up to stuffing with meat, salad, hummus and whatever else you could cram into it. In those days, no preservatives were used -- just flour, yeast, water and salt.

Today, only a few bakeries in Paterson sell the bread, including Fattal's and Nouri's. But for a decade or more, I have noticed a preference at some restaurants for the thinner, Lebanese-style pita over the slightly thicker Syrian-style loaf. No big deal you would think, but some Lebanese restaurants refused to buy freshly baked local pita and served thinner bread imported from Canada that often was cardboardy and didn't stand up to stuffing with food.

Fattal's loaf, although it is no longer baked in Paterson, has been my preferred bread since Amir's handmade, preservative-free, Lebanese-stlye pita disappeared. Despite the addition of calcium propionate to retard spoilage, Fattal's pita is pliable and stands up well to heating in the toaster. (Calcium propionate is an organic salt that inhibits the growth of mold and is considered one of the safest food additives, according to science.jrank.org.)

This week, I purchased a bag of Nouri's pita and found it is thinner and doesn't heat as well or stand up as well to stuffing. And since any meal can be eaten stuffed into pita, a pita you can't stuff is a pita you don't want.

Bitten hard by the food-shopping bug

In trying to cut down on our food shopping, I went without pita and hummus for more than a week and kept my vow to visit Costco only once a week. But on my trip to the warehouse store this afternoon, there was no Copper River wild salmon under the sign, meaning I will have to return tomorrow or go elsewhere for fresh fish.

I finally broke down and drove to Paterson yesterday, buying bread and other items at Fattal's, Nouri's and Taskin, a Turkish bakery. I haven't been to Nouri's for more than 10 years and found that prices at this longtime rival of Fattal's seem to be lower. When I got home and looked closely at the pita I purchased at both bakeries, I saw that a dozen medium-size pitas from Nouri's ($1.35) weighed 2 ounces less than a dozen from Fattal's ($1.50). Indeed, Nouri's bread is thinner.

At Fattal's, I picked up fragrant meat pies; small, pickled eggplants I had first mistaken for large olives, Moroccan sardines in spicy oil (99 cents a can); and canned hummus from Lebanon ($1.09). At Nouri's, I found fresh za'atar bread, olive oil soap ($1.19), apricots that I roast with chicken ($3.29 a pound) and a pound of sumac to sprinkle on salads (at home, I asked myself, why do you need a pound of sumac?).

At Taskin, the bread is large, thick and fluffy, so I picked up a regular loaf and one of whole wheat. I also bought borek, a thick tube of bread dough filled with seasoned potato. Taskin was out of cheese borek and cheese and spinach, so I was told to call next time and have some put aside.