How I reduced salt in a favorite dish

Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Spaghetti with sardines and anchovies.

You'd expect a dish with two small but mighty ocean fish to be salty, but pasta with canned sardines and anchovies really piles it on.

There is sodium in nearly every ingredient, including the imported Colavita whole-wheat pasta I sometimes use.

The first way to cut salt in the recipe is to stop salting the water used for boiling the pasta.

In the past, I'd pump up the flavor by dumping  sardines and anchovies and all their oil into the sauce, but now I drain the cans and add extra-virgin olive oil, which has no sodium.

A 2-ounce can of anchovies has 860 milligrams of sodium or 36% of the recommended daily intake of 2,400 milligrams. 

The anchovies dissolve completely, but give the sauce a hearty, non-fishy flavor.

A 4-ounce-plus can of the Moroccan sardines I use has 603 milligrams of sodium.

But the only way to avoid more sodium in the sauce is to make it yourself.

Today, I looked at the labels of a dozen bottled pasta sauces at the Hackensack ShopRite, and typically saw more than 300, 400 or even 500 milligrams of sodium listed for a serving size of one-half cup.

The nutritional label of Mario Batali Tomato Basil sauce.

I found the lowest salt content in Chef Mario Batali's Tomato Basil pasta sauce -- only 180 mg per half cup -- but other Mario Batali sauces have a lot more sodium.

When I serve pasta with sardines and anchovies, I like to add grated Pecorino Romano, a sheep's milk cheese, so that's another source of sodium.

Not using salt in the pasta water and draining the cans of fish are good first steps, but I think I have to go further.

I could cut the amount of sardines -- to two cans from three or four per pound of pasta -- as well as use less bottled sauce and more extra-virgin olive oil.

I could also stop adding anchovies, but the sauce wouldn't be as robust. I can skip the grated cheese.

And I can console myself about the high sodium content of the dish by always drinking a glass or two of red wine with it.

At least that would be good for my heart.

Jerry's 'Meals To Go' went fast

Image via Wikipedia

If you've ever had one of the complete dinners called "Meals To Go" from Jerry's Gourmet in Englewood, you know what a delicious bargain they are. What I didn't know is that the Italian specialty store drops the price to $4.99 from $6.99 at 4 p.m.

A restaurant-quality meal -- entree, vegetable, pasta and other side dishes -- is already a steal at $6.99. At $4.99, well ... they really fly out of the refrigerated case, as I found out when I showed up a little after 5 p.m. today and they were gone. My consolation prize was free samples of a half-dozen cheeses Jerry's puts out every day.

I remember well the  "Meal To Go" with Chilean sea bass (photo), and others with flounder and other seafood, which we have been eating in place of meat since Sunday.

Tonight, I took a cup of  leftover Mexican green sauce with a little fish in it, added six eggs, tomato, red pepper and onion, and poured the mixture into a large, non-stick frying pan with hot extra-virgin olive oil. I put pieces of sliced yogurt cheese on top, and let it cook on the stove for about 15 minutes. I finished it under the broiler.

We ate the frittata with leftover spaghetti and sardines in tomato sauce and broccoli rabe from our dinner last night.

Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., 
Englewood; 201-871-7108.

Shopping and cooking notes

Besides the free-range, grass-fed Australian beef I went for, I had hoped to pick up a few other things on my trip to the ShopRite in Rochelle Park yesterday, but prices were all over the place.

As I walked into the store, I saw a stack of boxes with clementines, not from Spain but from Morocco, for a low $4.99 with a store card. But not far away, a 2-pound package of the elusive herbicide-free Campari tomatoes were priced at  $7.99 -- $4 a pound. I just stared at the price sign in disbelief. I did pick up two pointy cantaloupes from Guatemala for $3.

The Australian whole tenderloin for filet mignon was on sale for $4.99 a pound with a store card, but I couldn't find any that weighed more than 4.6 pounds, even though the sales circular said average weight was 6 pounds to 8 pounds. It's sold under the Nature's Reserve label. Next to it, the same cut of beef marked USDA Select -- the lowest of three U.S. government grades -- was on sale for $6.99 a pound. Why is free-range, grass-fed beef selling for $2 a pound less than conventionally raised beef? The sale ends Saturday.

When I got home, I trimmed as much fat as possible from the tenderloin, sliced it thin and divided it among three freezer bags, pouring on Korean bulgogi marinade (it looked similar to what is shown in photo above). They went into the freezer, enough for three meals of Korean barbecue at home with rice, red-leaf lettuce for wrapping and store-bought side dishes.

Then I prepared dinner -- spaghetti with sardines. This is not the classic Italian recipe of  pasta con sarde, which uses a tomato-less sauce . This is a thrown together recipe that takes only the time needed to boil the pasta.

I used three cans of Moroccan sardines in tomato sauce I bought at Fattal's Bakery in Paterson for 89 cents a can (Fattal's has the best sardine prices around). The sardines have no oil, so I poured three or four ounces of extra-virgin oilive oil over the fish in the pan, then added about a cup and a half of  leftover marinara sauce, dried Italian seasoning, basil and oregano, and red pepper flakes. Meanwhile, I boiled a half-pound of thick spaghetti.

With a big salad of organic salad greens, bread and Italian red wine, it was a satisfying, meatless meal, but I should have made more spaghetti, my 12-year-old son said.

ShopRite of Rochelle Park, 220 W. Passaic St.;

(201) 843-1424; open 24 hours.

Fattal's Bakery, 975 Main St.; (973) 742-7125;

Paterson; open seven days.