Snacking State-by-State: Michigan II - I am the Falafel King!!! (not)

As noted in the previous post, Michigan is home to large immigrant populations from Wales, Poland, Russia, and all over the Arab world (and probably a few Canadians that filtered in from Ontario).  Arab-American cuisine - especially brought by Lebanese immigrants among others - enjoys a strong presence in Detroit and nearby Dearborn, the latter of which enjoys the largest Arab-American community in the United States.

Official Name: State of Michigan
State Nicknames:The Wolverine State; The Great Lakes State

Admission to the US: January 26, 1837 (#26)
Capital: Lansing (5th largest)
Other Important Cities: Detroit (largest); Grand Rapids (2nd largest); Ann Arbor (6th largest)
Region: Midwest; Great Lakes; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Wild Rice
Bordered by: Lake Michigan (west and southwest); Indiana & Ohio (south); Lakes Erie & Huron (east); Ontario (Canada) (north and east); Lake Superior (north); Wisconsin (northwest)

Official State Foods and Edible Things: brook trout (fish); whitetail deer (game mammal)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: immigrant cuisines, especially German, Irish, Welsh and Middle Eastern/Arabic; Coney Island dog; pasty (in the Upper Peninsula); morel mushrooms

ArabDetroit.com notes the diversity of the Middle Eastern community in the Midwest: 22 nationalities (including Palestine) represent the Detroit area's vast Arab-American community.  Starting in the late 19th century, Syrian and Lebanese Christians flooded into the area looking for work, followed in the early 20th century by Muslim Arabs (specifically Yemenis and Palestinians) and Chaldeans - from what would later become Iraq) who came to work in the burgeoning auto industry.  Over a century later there are anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 Arab Americans in Michigan, most in the Detroit metropolitan area [ArabDetroit.com 2011]

Middle Eastern food - popular not just in the Arab world but in Israel as well - has become a popular staple in the United States.  Today you can find hummus, falafel, tabbouleh and a host of other Middle Eastern foods in any supermarket in the US - foods that were at best specialty items twenty years ago.  And usually, these recipes are easy to make yourself.

The recipes: Hummus and Falafel

I tried two hummus recipes.  The first one, from Madelain Farah's Lebanese Cuisine, did not turn out so well for me.  The second, recipe #2 of My Cooking Class: Middle Eastern Basics by Marianne Magnier-Moreno, was what really worked.



The recipe: Hummus

* garbanzo beans (i.e., chickpeas - canned is fine for this.  If you want a smoother hummus, try removing the skins.  I learned this while listening to Splendid Table on NPR  Even at Whole Foods, chickpeas aren't that expensive.  Surprisingly, one can of the cheap ones costs about as much as a can of Goya chickpeas at Food Lion - about 85¢ for a can.  If you go with dried, remember that one pound of dried chickpeas eventually yields the equivalent of about four 15 oz cans)
* tahini (this sesame paste is a vital component to your hummus.  I bought Asmar's brand out of Lebanon, which was a little less expensive than the other ones, at about $3.50.  Probably the easiest one to find is Brooklyn-based Joyva's tahini, which is in a lot of supermarkets)
* lemon juice (I used both a fresh lemon and juice from the bottle)
* garlic (had it)
* olive oil (same)
* parsley flakes, paprika and pine nuts (these are garnishes for your hummus - use whatever ones you like)

Also consider eating this with pita bread, tabbouleh and maybe some nice homemade falafel (see below)
 

Using Mangier-Moreno's recipe (each step beautifully photographed by Frédéric Lucano in My Cooking Class: Middle Eastern Basics), you will drain the chickpeas, reserving some of the liquid.

Combine all of the ingredients except for the chickpea liquid and the olive oil.  Just throw them all into your food processor.

When I made the first go-round, using a different recipe in Maria Khalifé's The Middle Eastern Cookbook (page 21 - the Lebanese Hummus bi Tahini), I got what you see above: a lot of tahini dissolved in water and lemon juice.  Maybe I added too much (well duh).  Regardless, hummus soup was not what I was going for.

Round two worked much better (in fact most of the hummus photos are from my second, successful attempt at hummus-making).  Here, add the chickpea liquid a little at a time, until you get the desired consistency.

To wit, the desired consistency.  Mine was a little chunky, but it worked for me.

Even though it was a bit chunky, I liked this hummus more than any store-bought I have had, and about as much as any I've had in a restaurant.  Perhaps it was because making it was so much easier than I had anticipated, or maybe it was the freshness.  I don't know, but it was a nice one.

For a more complete (and, I might add, vegetarian-friendly) Middle Eastern feast, fry up some falafel.

The recipe: Falafel

The falafel is popular in both the Arab world and in Israel, where it is considered a national dish, and both Arab and Jewish immigrants from the Middle East brought the falafel to the United States.  The recipe I used was one of the rare ones I could find that was chickpea-exclusive.  Most if not all falafel recipes call for fava beans - falafels that use them come out with that distinct green hue.  This is especially common in Lebanese recipes.  This one I used, from Madelain Farah and showcased on Sara's Secrets, is different from one I saw in her book Lebanese Cuisine.  That recipe also calls for fava beans and chickpeas.  The fava-free recipe is better if you suffer from favism (which I do not seem to).  Since fava beans are not nearly as easy to find in the US, this one seemed like a no-brainer.

* chickpeas - this time I used two cans.  Yes, I should have gone the dried route.  Falafels seem to turn out better when you use the dried stuff, again skinned)
* onion, coarsely chopped
* baking soda (had it)
* cumin, chili flakes and coriander (had them)
* garlic, chopped (also on hand)
* flour (Farah's recipe does not call for much flour, but as I found out, I would need a good bit more just to keep it from falling apart)
* oil for frying

If using dried, soak overnight.  Otherwise, drain the chickpeas, but this time do not save the liquid - you won't need it.  Remove as many of the skins as you can.

This won't be a particularly quick process, but it's worth it if you are using the canned stuff.  If using fava beans, you will need to soak them overnight as well and skin them.

Add the onion and process.

Throw in the rest of the ingredients except for the oil (duh) and process until crumbly and mixed together.

Form into small balls, or patties.  I eventually found patties to work best, though the problems I had probably did not have so much to do with the shape of the falafel so much as the lack of flour.  These little beauties disintegrated as soon as I put them in the oil.  So what I did was use the Google to find out how to stop this.  The answer: flour.  Add more and more flour, which will help to bind the falafels and keep them from being vaporized in the pan.

These much better bound falafels held together better, though there were still some bits boiling off.

Drain and serve, preferably in pitas though this is not necessary.  I may have pulled them out too early, but again, I was afraid of seeing yet another series of falafels disintegrating into chickpea dust in the pan, so I took them out when I could.

Farah also gives a quick recipe for a tahini dipping sauce: smoosh garlic and chop with salt.

Mix with water and tahini, and then slowly add lemon juice.  Eventually it will thicken.

My falafels were a little softer than I would have liked.  Again, this may be due to my pulling them out of the oil sooner, or perhaps because I used canned instead of dried and soaked chickpeas.  I still had a good experience with the falafels that actually did turn out, though I ended up putting the pitas aside and just eating them and these lovely tomatoes with my hands.

With the hummus I made earlier, this turned out to be a most filling meal.

Sources:

ArabDetroit.com.  "Arab Americans".  Much information contributed by Rosina Hassoun, (Arab Americans in Michgan, 2005). Copyright ArabDetroit.com, 2011.  All rights reserved.

Adams, Marcia. Heartland: The Best of the Old and the New from Midwest Kitchens. Clarkson Potter: New York, 1991.

braniac (eHow user).  "How to Make a Detroit-Style Coney Island Hot Dog".  eHow article, post date unknown.  Copyright 1999-2011 eHow.

Dooley, Beth, and Lucia Watson.  Savoring Seasons of the Northern Heartland.  Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1994.

Farah, Madelain. "Falafel: Chickpea Patties".  Featured on the episode "Late Night Sandwiches" of the show Sara's Secrets (Sara Moulton, host).  Food Network, 2004.

Farah, Madelain.  Lebanese Cuisine: More than 200 Simple, Delicious, Authentic Recipes.  Twelfth edition. Self-published: New York, 1997.

Magnier-Moreno, Marianne, with Frédéric Lucano (photographer).  Middle Eastern Basics: 70 Recipes Illustrated Step by Step.  From the series "My Cooking Class".  Firefly Books: Buffalo, NY, 2010.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Michigan" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Michigan".

The Atlantic Magazine takes on Egyptian street food

I have never heard of this uniquely Egyptian fast food, kushari, the pasta-rice-garbanzo-lentil with tomato and crispy onion dish. Now I have to figure out a way to make this. As Maggie Schmitt noted about it for The Atlantic Magazine's website, this street food is now becoming posher, as more sit-down restaurants are popping up to sell the stuff:

Instead of disappearing before the onslaught of hamburgers and fried chicken, local street foods are updating their image and presentation, and competing with international fast food on its own terms, targeting a middle class with increasingly urbane tastes. While in the older neighborhoods kushari is still ladled out from wooden street carts and in tiny hole-in-the-wall eateries, in the swankier parts of town you can get your fix at a gleaming new kushari restaurant franchise with formica banquette seating and waiters in uniforms with baseball caps.

Hopefully it'll show the McFalafel who's boss. There are also glorious photos of kushari and some places that serve it with the article. I just ate and it's making me hungry again.

Exit 32A: US-1 South (Belair Road, to Overlea)

It's taken me a while to get back on the Beltway since I still haven't been able to shake my jetlag from Cali. So I sadly woke up around 10ish on this past Monday morning (my body thinks it's 7am but my clock doesn't). Out doing errands I finally worked my way around to Route 1 (Bel Air Road at this end). This is the second time I have hit US Route 1 on the Beltway - qv Exit 12A towards Arbutus. The third if you count US-1 Alt around Exit 10 (in Lansdowne, feeding into Arbutus), and is the first. It's also the first of several routes that bisect the Beltway that I have hit the other way around (just wait for I-95 and US-40).

I'm a useless stats geek, alright? You should've seen me in high school, glued every week to American Top 40. I was all addicted to the never-ending stream of useless statistics Casey Kasem threw out about such-and-such an artist. DON'T JUDGE ME!

I drove a good ways looking for food into Overlea - aka Nottingham, aka Fullerton, all depending on which part you are in (and what internet map engine you use). The trees in Overlea are all abloom right now. It's really very lovely to drive around, particularly along the side streets, which I got to do when I needed made a U-turn. I admit that this is the first time I've ever taken this exit, in my entire life (Exit 32B? I know it well). I never have a reason to go to Overlea, so...

Anyway, it was a nice learning experience for me. And in just the first few miles of Bel Air Road I saw quite a few places I catalogued in the back of my mind, apart from mega chains such as Carrabba's Italian Grill and, well, McDonald's:

• Schooner's Restaurant and Lounge (map) is the first restaurant you come by, and it was one of the last I stopped at. I would've gone in but, even around 1PM there were only about four cars in the relatively large parking lot. So I guessed it just wasn't open and pressed on.
• Amer's Cafe - one of several eateries I considered in the Beltway Plaza (map). From the parking lot you can't really tell that it has a Middle Eastern theme. You also can't tell that it's closed on Mondays from that far away. I found out when I peered in and thought, "Hey, it looks pretty sparse." Prices for entrées ran around $7 to $12, a bit more than I wanted to pay that day. And get this: Amer's was voted Best Kid Friendly Restaurant from 2002 through 2008, though by whom I'm not sure.
  
• Much more open was the Overlea Café (see the Beltway Plaza map), but I didn't go in. Anyone been here? It doesn't even seem to be online. I Googled it and all I got was Amer's Cafe.
• One more notable spot includes Waterman's Pride Seafood (again, see Beltway Plaza map). It's this exit's token seafood market. Again, I've found little to no info about it. All I do know? DEY GOTS 'EM MURLIN CRABS, HON!
  
• A short ways down from the Plaza is the Overlea Diner (map), the City Paper's Best Diner of 2004. I will make a note to stop by soon. At least when the CP people stopped by, the employees dressed in 50's-style gas station attendant get-ups! (Whatever they wear, it cannot be as bad as what the kids have to wear* at Hot Dog on a Stick).
  

Among a few other pizza-and-sub joints (Philly's Best Subs and Pizza, map) and Chinese greasy woks (Fun Wok, map), I came across the unimposing Midori (map). Midori is part of a growing pan-East Asian phenomenon in Baltimore Chinese restaurants now serving food from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam or a combination of the above. Midori is a Sino-Japanese place, and it has gotten rave reviews. Midori does not let you forget this fact - it's plastered in big white sticky letters on their windows. Apart from the free advertising, the decor looks like they took a stucco Mexican restaurant, stripped it of everything Mexican, and painted Japanese motifs on the walls, then put lots of Chinese and another sprinkling of Japanese decorations on the walls and ceiling. Even the five mascots for the Beijing 2008 Olympics are happily, "cuddly-ly" standing over the entrance to the kitchen, waiting to be adored. And except for the booths (your standard booths), the tables and chairs were straight off of a Motels' album cover from the 1980's. For once, I sat down to eat, alone in the restaurant, avoiding the lunch rush. I chose to sit in the booths, just to keep "Only the Lonely Can Play" from echoing over and over again in my head while I ate.

Midori's Chinese menu has a great variety of entrées, appetizers (inlcuding highly recommended dim sum), and for lunch it was all a reasonable price. Its Japanese menu was only a little pricier, and equally varied. All the typical culprits were there - orange chicken, beef and broccoli, something, anything in lobster sauce, with egg rolls, pork fried rice and so on on the Chinese side; tempura, sashimi, sushi, miso soup, shumai and gyoza on the Japanese side. I went mostly for the Chinese orange chicken with pork fried rice and hot and sour soup (all of $5.95), plus a side of tuna sashimi ($3.95).

STOP!!! Chicken time...

Going off of past experiences with take-out Chinese food, I expected the orange chicken to not be very good - gummy, chewy, and filling enough to force me to request a take home bag. But Oh My Word. It had to be the best Chinese food I have eaten on the East Side of the county! Crispy and crunchy without that nasty processed flavor. Maybe that's because I ate in, but still, they've gotten raves from others. Everything - the pork fried rice, the coating, the chicken and its orange sauce, even the scallions and orange peels - tasted so good and fresh to me! The one lowlight was the broccoli, which was a little undercooked. But I'd rather have undercooked broccoli than overcooked, gummy orange chicken (bleeeekh). The hot and sour soup was the throwaway item and I hardly touched it, but honestly I almost finished the rice. There was nothing left to take home (not the biggest portion, which is awesome I think). As for the tuna sashimi - three pieces instead of the typical two, for about the same price - it was a little fatty (fine with me) and tasty, though a bit grainy in texture. Not the best sashimi I have had, and it clearly got outshone by the orange chicken. I can't vouch for the tempura or rolls, but if you consider Chinese dishes with sides of sashimi, just stick with the Chinese.

The total for my dining experience was $10.50 before tip, $12.50 after. It is one of the few area Chinese restaurants that I would go out of my way to visit again.

Other Photos:

Told you it was all abloom

Yeah, hons! We got crabs, hons!

And 257 blue-haired little old ladies go through the nic fits of their lives

Places I visited:

Midori (Chinese / Japanese) - 7407 Belair Road, Nottingham, MD 21236; Phone: (410) 882-8750

• Would I eat there again? Definitely (but only for the Chinese)
  
• Would I go out of my way to eat there again? For the Chinese, yes. For the sashimi, no.
  

Places to look up later:

Amer's Cafe (Middle Eastern / Egyptian / American) - 7624 Belair Road, in Belair Beltway Plaza, Nottingham, MD 21236; Phone: (410) 668-5100

Fun Wok (Chinese) - 7400 Belair Road, Nottingham, MD 21236; Phone: (410) 668-0001

Overlea Cafe (American) - Help me out here. I can't find the information. In Belair Beltway Plaza, Nottingham, MD 21236

Overlea Diner (diner) - 6652 Belair Road, Overlea, MD 21206; Phone: (410) 254-8356

Philly's Best Subs and Pizza (subs and pizza) - 6701 Belair Road, Overlea, MD 21206; Phone: (410) 661-6611

Schooner's Restaurant and Lounge (American) - 7703 Belair Road, Nottingham, MD 21236; Phone: (410) 668-5053

Waterman's Pride Seafood (seafood / crabs) - 7692 Belair Road, in Belair Beltway Plaza, Nottingham, MD 21236; Phone: (410) 665-5555



* Linked photo courtesy of MR38 from Flickr, all rights reserved.

Sahara Grill

After my visit to Chinatown, I explored the city a little bit, eventually finding my way back to the Franklin Institute to catch that great Tutankhamun exhibit. It was fabulous! The only thing that disappointed me was that, from the stuff that was posted outside the exhibit, it led me to believe that the actual mummy, or at least physical reconstructions of the ancient boy-king, would be featured in the exhibit. Nope. Just a brief blurb at the end of the exhibit. But it was not a disappointing exhibition at all. There were so many great things shown from Tut's tomb, as well as those of his parents (Akhenaten and Tiye, according to one genealogy and this exhibition), stepparents (Nefertiti) and grandparents. There were canopic jars, chairs, staffs, shabti, busts and so many other great things out the wazoo. At $34, the price can be a wee bit prohibitive, but it will be worth it. It's there until September, so start saving now and go sometime in the next few months.

It seemed only fitting that such an exhibit be followed with some delicious Middle Eastern cuisine. So I headed back to Walnut St. and found the Sahara Grill. In the heart of Philly's "gayborhood" (the gay neighborhood of the city), I had accidentally stumbled upon this place once before. I've never mentioned it before because, well, I couldn't think of the name! Pretty sad, especially for food that was pretty memorable. All I knew was that it was in that area somewhere, so I started roaming around and luckily I found it.

It wasn't too obvious to me that I could seat myself, as the waitresses and all the staff are at the back of this small but lovely restaurant. I got seated by the window and was given a menu. Of course, it took me a while to figure out exactly what to eat. I finally settled on the lamb and beef shawerma, in this case chopped up and laid on top of a flavorful rice with some red onion and grilled vegetables (not many), and accompanied by some yogurt. I ordered a separate order of thick yogurt, labneh, which was covered with a little bit of olive oil and spices.

I had no idea just how much food I had ordered.

First came the labneh, a medium-sized bowl which came either with or at the same time as my salad (just lettuce and tomatoes, but at least none of that nasty iceberg lettuce) and pita. Then came my massive plate of shawerma about five minutes later. It took a while to eat this stuff and about halfway through I just gave up and boxed the rest. I also passed on dessert (they have baklava if you want dessert). I figured the food would survive a two hour drive home in the cold February weather. It must have, because I just finished eating it for lunch, and so far, I am feeling fine and groovy.