Hot on the Trail
Costa Rica, in East-Central Somerset County
The classic dishes of the Central American country that borders both the Caribbean and the Pacific and sports mountains and rainforests in between are on display in eateries devoted to its foodways in Bound Brook and its neighboring communities. Take a culinary vacation courtesy of these family-run spots in our very own Tico Town.
At Mitsuwa, It’s Hokkaido Crab Time
Once again, Garden Staters are in for a worldly treat, one available at America’s finest Japanese uber-market, located along the Hudson River in Edgewater.
Fortnightly 5
Tico & Atypical
Call these a rather eccentric quintet of favorites: Three dishes that seem imported directly from Costa Rica, a curious specimen that’s North America’s largest native fruit yet not found in supermarkets, and a burger hardly fit for grill or griddle. These are the chart-topping five from the two weeks just past.
Sunday Kitchen
Charred Beans with Lemon Yogurt
Enter a border-free zone and make supper out of an in-season vegetable by taking what’s on hand, zapping it with spices you favor and bringing it all together on one plate.
Garden State Groceries: Feeding Ourselves
Where do you shop for food? Farmers’ markets, box stores, supermarkets, specialty markets, ethnic markets, on-farm markets and stands? Dollar stores or convenience stores? A combo of many? There’s another option and it’s one distinctly suited to New Jersey.
Food Find
Lizano Salsa
A condiment with a smoky-tangy soul that’s indispensable in Costa Rica proves its worth as a spirited accent to a wide range of foods common on tables in the Garden State.
Sunday Kitchen
Tomato Cobbler
Ease tomatoes into autumn with a twist on the sweetened fruit standard that’s flexible enough to accommodate a topper of ready-to-bake canned biscuits or your own scratch-made soft and flaky quick-breads. In the end, it might be the treatment given the fruit that matters most.
Tomato Concentrate
At Rutgers’ Snyder Research and Extension Farm in Pittstown, the Garden State’s most celebrated crop is tasted, touted and toasted by pro growers, home gardeners and eaters – a bounty of eaters determined to sample dozens and dozens of tomatoes small, medium and large, red, orange, golden, yellow, white, green, multi and purple. Royal, beet-colored purple.
Food Find
Weirdough NJ Bagels
Tangy, chewy and born of sourdough, a home-baker’s distinctive breakfast rounds need no embellishments to let you start your day on a roll. In fact, on better than a roll.
Fortnightly 5
Taking It for a Spin
The next time you might be tempted to take for granted a tomato, bagel, bowl of ramen or spaghetti, or big ol’ hunk of meat, think about this quintet of five new favorites and realize what a pro can do by re-thinking a process.
Sunday Kitchen
Produce Junction, Part 2
Happy Labor Day Weekend! If you took the party challenge and did a little prep this past week, making the most of the convergence of high summer and fall vegetables and fruits, you’re ready and set to go-ahead with a great spread of eats. If you’re winging it at the last minute, do so with what’s prime at this most bountiful time of year with easy small bites of the put-together variety.
Stone Circle Farm’s Worldly View
A husband-and-wife team with deep roots in the food industry have grown their home vegetable garden into a community-focused organic farm that aims to educate as well as feed. Lauren Vitagliano reports from Cape May County.
The Able Baker
Happy days are always here at Maplewood’s hometown bakeshop, a downtown Village storefront that is among the Garden State’s best for both sweets and savories. Its signature baked good? Impossible to pick just one since its specialties seem to be everything that comes out of its ovens.
Sunday Kitchen
Produce Junction, Part 1
Extend those invitations right now and have a party sometime on Labor Day Weekend. The season’s convergence of high summer and fall vegetables and fruits will lead the way to an easier-than-you-think menu of bright-flavor foods. Next Sunday, we’ll offer ideas of the last-minute variety.
The Eggplant Extra
New Jersey ranks No. 1 nationally in eggplant production, something our farmers and appreciative residents can be proud of, most rightly. But why is it that a preponderance of our eggplant is served to us in the form of parm – delicious and beloved, no doubt – when we have product aplenty to allow the fruit we employ as a vegetable to strut its versatility?
Honeycakes
Baker Susan Carter takes her cues from European pastry traditions and turns out cakes, cookies and inspired treats that reference her mother’s Hungarian homeland. Pierogies will lead the way to even more savory fare, all of it a celebration of cultures where home-cookery is revered.
Fortnightly 5
Different Strokes
This fortnight’s round of favorite eats is highlighted by less-common takes on the familiar, bringing delights either demure or double-barreled.
Sunday Kitchen
Ten Ways to Love Eggplant
Whether you’re an eggplant lover or you need the trappings of a parm to make it palatable, know that our Garden State is No, 1 in the nation for eggplant production and we at TPW want you to make the most of its time at NJ’s farmers’ markets and on local farmstands. That’s why we’re offering these non-parm how-tos.
Smart Shop
On-Farm Stores
Garden State farmers are setting up shops, not just roadside stands, on their farms, spotlighting their own produce as well as condiments helpful to home cooks and foods from neighboring artisans. It’s consumer-friendly convenience that makes getting a wealth of local foods on the table easy as pie – which is sold at some stores as well.
Food Find
Rice Bowl, at El Pueblo Taqueria
Let a chef with know-how and an artillery of fine ingredients compose for you an edible mosaic in the Mexican manner that leaves the versions churned out at fast-casual chains in the dust. It’s all done the right way at a locals’ favorite in North Cape May.
Boat to Table: Collared
What arguably is the best part of a fish often is left on the cutting room floor, depriving pro cooks, home cooks and diners the chance to experience its sheer succulence and rich flavors. The remedy can come through a very direct way of getting local fishes to local people.
Insider Insight
Which summer vegetable or fruit do you think is underappreciated and/or underused? That’s the question we posed to some of our top culinary professionals. Their answers illuminate and inspire.
Fortnightly 5
Up with Down-to-Earth
To be loved, a food doesn’t have to be earth-shattering or served in posh surroundings or sport pricey, luxe ingredients. It can be as down-to-earth as vegetables, fruit, bread, fish and beans can be and still rise to the top of our charts.
Sunday Kitchen
Zuke Cups
One of the season’s most prolific crops gets a new look and a new use with minimal effort. Sporty and cute, these little vessels offer smooth sailing in the kitchen on a summer night.
People
One from Column Yan
If you’ve been wondering how the fascinatingly glorious “Chinese-inspired” dishes at Sean Yan’s Ram & Rooster in Metuchen come together, the chef’s first anniversary celebration special menu proves a study in dissecting his personal, provocative cuisine. Yan does that for TPW readers here.
Food Find
Gluten-free Breads at Kitch Organic
Everything Seeded stars in a fine lineup of gluten-free breads at this breakfast-lunch stop on Red Bank’s West Side.
Sunday Kitchen
AwesomeYo’s Spiced Potato Chips
A chip that can make a snack into a meal is found at an eatery in Metuchen that sports savory fare and baked goods, as well as pure-gold finds such as these brashly seasoned homemade crisps.
Fajji’s Ice Cream
A fixture in Perth Amboy is this ice cream stand where the churner in charge pushes butterfat content to its limit even as he fully respects the flavor quotient. And there are quenching helados tropicales on board. Salud!