Flashback: Julia Child's Cheese Quiche, Almost (originally published 1/13/08)

Julia Child would have been 100 years old today.  Hopefully Child's kitchen will go back on display soon at the American History Museum in DC (the wing is merely closed for renovations, so it is coming back).  Child-mania has rightfully come back, if it ever died down in the first place, since Julie & Julia (which I have my own ideas on from this post in 2009).  One of my favorite Child recipes was her simple and easy omelette.  A bit more difficult is her cheese quiche, which didn't really turn out well at first.

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Julia Child's Cheese Quiche, Almost (originally published January 13, 2008)


I have tackled the master, and the master has won.

At least at first.

A week or so ago I scored this great used copy of Julia Child's French Chef Cookbook. It was a lesser-known edition but the same recipes. I didn't have a Julia Child cookbook, so this was a nice edition to my library. Child, of course, needs no introduction. Born and raised in Pasadena - California, not Maryland, of course - and introduced to French cuisine by her husband, she eventually mastered French cookin', popularizing French cuisine and fine dining in mainstream America. She also was a pioneer in instructional cooking television. She is, of course, the Goddess. How many chefs could say their entire kitchen was transported and replicated in the National Museum of American History? In the Smithsonian for Heaven's sake? Bobby Flay brags about many things, but I doubt he will ever brag about that one. Same for Rachael Ray or Paula Deen or Anthony Bourdain. I'm going on a ridiculous tangent so I'll just go on.

We should demand a Food Network Classic for Julia Child. Her, Jeff Smith and the Galloping Gourmet. Anyway...

I had some eggs burning a hole in my fridge (strange picture in my mind), and a bag of mozzarella ready to turn. I needed to use them. So I found a few quiche recipes in the cookbook and settled on her quiche au fromage (Cheese Quiche, p. 257 in this edition - but aw hell, there are so many editions you should just look it up in the index). My first thought was: aren't all quiches "cheese quiches"? But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.


As always I cannot reprint the recipe. Just know that I needed to layer the bottom with 2/3 of a cup of Swiss. Only problem: no Swiss in my fridge! But like I said, I had that mozzarella to get rid of, so I used that.  Then I needed to mix egg, nutmeg, salt, pepper and milk. Whoa, hold on. I have no milk either. Yes, that's right, no milk. I did have some buttermilk to use up though. After mixing in the buttermilk, I poured it all into the pie shell, sprinkled on the rest of the cheese and dots of butter (my arteries are hardening already) and, just for some pizazz, a chopped-up shallot. Next I bake it for 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

I occasionally do some dumb things, and after half an hour the quiche was about half-baked. Perhaps the buttermilk meant that I needed to cook it longer. Perhaps - I had to bake it almost twice as long to get it to resemble anything more than runny scrambled eggs.



After a night in the fridge it felt and looked much more like a real quiche. This is probably much closer to what Julia Child had in mind in the first place. And it tastes lovely. So next time I will adjust the cooking time if I use buttermilk. Though I'm curious to see what it'll be like if I actually follow the directions, which I'll do next time. Never mess with the master, at least not the first time around.



Source:

Child, Julia. The French Chef Cookbook (1971, 1968: Bantam Books, New York, NY)

Snacking State-by-State: Pennsylvania III - Apple Pan Dowdy!? We don't need no stinkin' Apple Pan Dowdy! (or "Amish Pie-radise")

Indiana has the country's most Amish county, and per capita there are (apparently) more Amish in Ohio than in any other state.  But the Amish are forever tied to Pennsylvania, where they first set foot the United States.  Many an "English" tourist has flocked to Lancaster County to get some exposure to Amish lifeways and culture, only to bitch and moan when they get stuck behind a horse and buggy.  There is something to be said about we tourists actually trying to, you know, respect Amish lifeways - especially when that involves getting stuck behind a horse and buggy.  But I digress.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
State Nicknames: The Keystone State, The Quaker State
Admission to the US: December 12, 1787 (#2 - Delaware beat 'em to the punch)
Capital: Harrisburg (9th largest)
Other Important Cities: Philadelphia (largest), Pittsburgh (2nd largest), Allentown (3rd largest), Erie (4th largest)
Region: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest; Middle Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Maple Syrup; Clambake; Crabcake; Chestnut; Wild Rice
Bordered by: Maryland & the Mason-Dixon Line (south), West Virginia (southwest), Ohio (west), Lake Erie (northwest), New York (north & northeast), New Jersey & the Delaware River (east), Delaware (southeast)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: white-tailed deer (animal), milk (beverage), ruffed grouse (bird), chocolate chip cookie (cookie), brook trout (fish)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: German & Amish foods; Polish & Eastern European foods; pretzels, water ice, hoagies & Philly cheese steaks (particular to Philadelphia); city chicken, halupki & halušky, chipped ham, kielbasa (particular to Pittsburgh); scrapple; Hershey's chocolates; birch beer; Herr's Potato Chips, Hanover Pretzels & (yes) Utz Potato Chips; people (if you're an extra in a George Romero movie, that is - the big ones were all filmed near Pittsburgh)


The Amish first arrived in Pennsylvania in the 18th century, after fleeing Europe for their Anabaptist beliefs, specifically that only adults may be baptized.  According to Wikipedia and Lancaster County website [Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau 2012], they first settled in Berks County, with many eventually settling in nearby Lancaster County.  Today there are over 50,000 Amish in Pennsylvania, many centered around Lancaster County, along with their less religiously conservative but similarly "plain" religious brethren, the Mennonites and the Brethren (both of whom do use electricity but typically dress the same).

Many Marylanders have had exposure to the Amish - not necessarily to individual Amish, per se, but to Amish country.  This includes the massive Amish buffets in Lancaster and Strasburg, which don't seem to fit the Amish spirit - "Amish" and "excess" aren't really two words that go together.  But as the Amish America website points out, the Amish are known for good food.  Good, filling, and not exactly slimming food.  While the Amish pretty much grow (and sell) their own farm foods - vegetables, eggs, milk, meat - depending on what the specific community allows, some Amish may buy food at the grocery store or even make their own wine (many communities are dry apart from weddings and semi-annual communion services).  And even the Amish are eating out more than they used to, bringing more processed foods into their diets.  But overall, most of their diet is of the low-processed variety [Amish America, 2010].

A few dishes are particularly famous for being Amish dishes.  Some, like scrapple, have crossed over into our "English" world.  Many people in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic love scrapple, that mixture of pig parts and cornmeal that you slice up and fry.


I. HATE. SCRAPPLE.

I could never understand what my mother saw in it back when she had a block of Rapa Scrapple sitting in the fridge ready to slice and fry up.  The Amish are also famous for their pies - apple butter pies, sugar cream pies, whoopie pies (yes, they make those just like New Englanders do), and the pie that I most readily identify as Amish: the shoo fly pie.

Just as New Englanders share whoopie pies with the Amish, so Southerners share shoo fly pies with them as well.  Hardly an Amish restaurant or buffet in Lancaster County is missing this gooey concoction of molasses and brown sugar baked in a pie shell.  One doesn't need to connect too many dots to figure out where it got its name: all the molasses attracted flies, hence the need to shoo them away.  While it is also known below the Mason-Dixon Line, as Montgomery pie (with lemon added), I have always thought of this as an Amish thing.  And few if any of the Amish cookbooks you buy in Amish Country are missing a recipe for the famous and easy pie.  I got this recipe from one of those cookbooks, The Amish Homestead Cookbook [date unknown], printed (apparently) for the Amish Homestead on Lincoln Highway East in Lancaster - long since replaced (apparently) by a Wal-Mart.

The Recipe: Shoo Fly Pie

This shoo fly pie recipe is on page 28 of The Amish Homestead Cookbook (in the "Fastnacht Day" section).  Since I don't think this is a copyrighted book - there isn't even a publication date - and not a terribly easy book to find, I will provide a photo of the recipe for exact measurements:

So as you see, you will need:

* pie crusts (yes I cheated - again, Trader Joe's is a good pre-made pie crust with as little junk as you will find in a pre-made pie crust.  Extra plus: I had this in the freezer and didn't even know it!  Note: though the Amish do occasionally shop in grocery stores, they probably would make their own)

From here there are two components to this recipe, the crumb part and the liquid part.  For the former, assemble:
* brown sugar (had it)
* flour (same)
* shortening (some recipes call for lard and/or butter, as Alton Brown's version on his molasses episode of Good Eats uses)

For the latter you will need:
* molasses (had a bottle of backstrap molasses in the pantry)
* salt (no, I didn't have this lying around.  That was snark.)
* cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger (I had most in ground form - had to grind the cloves myself)
* baking soda (had it too)
* hot water (not difficult to find)

Mix the brown sugar, flour and shortening together until well blended.

Like so.

Next, grind your spices if they need grinding.

Add the spices, salt and baking soda to your bowl.

Dump in your molasses.

And add hot water.

Mix the whole mess together.

Now for the pie crusts.  You only need one, to fit a 9 inch pie plate.  If you thaw it correctly, you won't need to roll it out.  I forgot this step, and so tried to cheat by blow drying it, on high.  [Yes, don't laugh.]  Needless to say, it didn't work, but with enough stopped and started blow drying it did soften the pie crust enough that I could roll out the various pieces that broke off as I tried to unroll it, and re-roll it out into a normal pie crust shape.  I could even make up for the few pieces I lost to the floor.

Looks good as new.  This is a little tedious, but the blow dryer and re-roll method is a viable shortcut if you forgot to thaw your pie crust.  Also I must point out that I got this method for rolling out pie dough between two pieces of plastic, wax paper or parchment paper from Adam Roberts, who suggested this on his Amateur Gourmet website.  I could not tell you when he posted this.  All I know is I got this from him.  So cred where cred is due.

Put the pie crust in the pie plate.

Crimp the edges and make it look all purty-like.

Now you're ready to assemble the pie.  Alternate crumb and liquid, making sure you both start and end with a crumb layer.

The easiest way for me to do it was crumb-liquid-crumb-liquid-crumb.

I went to the trouble of spreading out the crumbs all over the top.

You will bake this in two steps.  Start with a 450°F oven and bake for 15 minutes, then decrease the temperature to 350°F (I got there fast by both lowering the temperature and leaving the oven door open until it got there) for 20 minutes more.

Let it cool down, or just eat it piping hot.  Mmmm.  Burns from piping hot molasses.

This shoo fly pie is pretty much part and parcel what I would have expected from a shoo fly pie.  It tastes about the same, and feels that way too: gooey, ridiculously sweet and slightly salty, with a wonderfully flaky pie crust and a desperate need for some ice cream.  Again, the Amish are not eating health food.  Remember that, people.


Sources:

Amish America.  "What do Amish eat?"  Copyright 2010 Amish America, All rights reserved.

Amish Homestead Cookbook.  Tourist cookbook, date of publication unknown.

AmericanCivilWar.com.  "American Civil War Recipes: Union Hardtack and Confederate Johnnie Cakes".  Date unknown.  Copyright 1997-2012 AmericanCivilWar.com, maintained by Central Design Lab. All articles are public domain and clearly credit and link to the author when possible.

Batz, Bob, Jr. "Pittsburgh sticks with loving 'City Chicken'".  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, published March 30, 2012.  Copyright ©1997-2012 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.

Brieda, Luboš.  "Potato Dumplings (Halušky)".  Slovak Cooking, posted November 3, 2009.  Updated March 24, 2010.  Copyright 2009-2011 Slovak Cooking.

Chowhound.com.  "Slicing Ribeye roast for philly cheese steak".  Discussion on "Home Cooking" board, Chowhound.com. Thread started September 6, 2008.

Pat's King of Steaks. "Pat's King of Steaks Philadelphia Cheese Steak".  Featured on the episode "Best Sandwiches" of the show The Best Of.  Food Network, 1999.

Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau.  "Pennsylvania Amish history & beliefs".  Copyright 2012 Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau, site maintained by Cimbrian.

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.  Pennsylvania Cookbook Trail of History.  From the Editors of Stackpole Books and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, foreword by William Woys Weaver.  Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, PA, 2004.

Pittsburgh.About.com (About.com). "How to Make Haluski (Cabbage and Noodles)"  Date unknown.  Copyright 2012 About.com.  All rights reserved.

Robinson, Douglas.  "City Chicken".  Recipe in I Grew Up in Southwestern Pennsylvania: A Nostalgic Look at Growing Up in the Pittsburgh Region.  Recipe featured in the article "Pittsburgh sticks with loving 'City Chicken'" by Bob Batz, Jr. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, published March 30, 2012)

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

Not "Pie" - "Pi"!

Jsut remembering this tasty morsel from a few years back on National Pi Day.

Mmmm. 3.1415926535897.....

Snacking State-by-State: New Hampshire II - Meat pie, minus the whole Demon Barber thing

Most New Hampshirites trace their background to Ireland, Portugal, Italy and France.  Given its close proximity to Québec, it stands to reason that French-Canadian cuisine would be found easily in New Hampshire (and all of northern New England).  And yes, New Hampshire does have a significant French-Canadian population.  According to the New Hampshire Historical Society, French-Canadians flooded into New Hampshire as other New Hampshirites headed west for other opportunities.  Up to 50,000 French-Canadians lived in New Hamsphire by 1890 [NHHS 2011].  Today most French-Canadian-Americans in New Hampshire live in Manchester and Nashua, and in the northern areas of the state (if Wikipedia can be believed).

Official Name: State of New Hampshire
State Nicknames: The Granite State
Admission to the US:  June 21, 1788 (#9)
Capital: Concord (3rd largest)
Other Important Cities: Manchester (largest), Nashua (2nd largest), Derry (4th largest)
Region: Northeast, New England; New England (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Maine (east); Atlantic Ocean (southeast); Massachusetts (south); Vermont (west); Québec (Canada) (north)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: white-tailed deer (animal); brook trout (freshwater game fish); striped bass (saltwater game fish)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Irish and French-Canadian/Québecois foods; maple syrup, apples, cranberries; typical New England foods

Originally I had thought to tackle that Québecois classic, poutine, the famous combination of French fries and cheese curds covered in gravy.  But I didn't find much on poutine in New Hampshire.  Much easier to find were recipes for the very hearty French-Canadian meat pie known as tourtière.  The tourtière is a particular treat around the Christmas season, and is specifically eaten on Christmas Eve.  Yankee Magazine printed a charming story about Raymond "Moose" Despres and his mother's and grandmother's meat pies [Clark 2010] - the same type made by the mother and grandmother of the girl he fell for.  That girl, Penny (Rousseau) Despres, shared her grandmother's tourtière recipe with

Yankee Magazine, and I attempt it below.

The Recipe: Memère Rousseau's Tourtière

For this tourtière you will need the following:

* pork (a few pounds of it, ground.  I got some at the Fresh Market for about $4 per pound)
* potatoes (you will need a few cups, mashed)
* water (had it)
* salt (again, had it)
* onion (I actually ran out of onions, so I had to use shallots instead.  At least they're popular in French cooking)
* 2 pie crusts (yes, again I was lazy. Sue me.  But one thing to remember: Trader Joe's makes one hell of a pie crust, and it doesn't even have HFCS or hydrogenated anythings in it.  Just costs $4)
* cloves (you will grind them)
* cinnamon (also ground)
* I forgot to put it in the photo, but you also need a little milk to brush over top the pie crust.

Put the pork, the onions/shallots, water and salt in a large pot and cook on a low flame for several hours.  Yes, several hours, and constantly check on it, too.  The above recipe says you need to let it cook for four hours.

I stopped at about 2 1/2, which was the bare minimum cooking time that I saw in any tourtière recipe in my research.

Meanwhile, mash up those potatoes.

Grind your spices.

And prepare your pie crusts.  I used a 9 1/2" pie plate.  Use at least a 9" one.

Mix the spices in with the pork mixture before you add it to the pie shell.

And then add the mashed potatoes.

Mix it all together.

And put it into the pie shell.

Cover with the other pie crust, crimp it, score it and maybe even make some sort of pretty design if you feel like it.  I was kind of impressed with this ery French Canadian fleur-de-lis myself.  I'm not the artistic type.  I'd be lucky if I made a blob correctly.

Lightly brush milk over top of the top crust.

Bake for about 400°F for 30 minutes.

This is a hearty pie, which belies the tender crust covering it (guess I'll be lazy next time and go with Trader Joe's again).  As for the meat: the thing that really does it for me is the ground clove and cinnamon spice blend.  It's unexpected, and without it this would be a pretty dull pie.  With it, it's quite a nice treat.  And I will have to get a lot of exercise in after eating this pie.

- - - - -


We're heading down Interstate 95 next, and getting stuck on the turnpike for a while.  It's time to find out what's cookin' in Jersey.



Sources:


Clark, Edie.  "French Canadian meat pies are a family legacy (Best Cook: Meat Pie)".  Yankee Magazine, January/February 2010.

Dojny, Brooke.  The New England Cookbook.  Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999.

Hensperger, Beth, and Julie Kaufmann. Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. Harvard Common Press: Boston, 2005.

New Hampshire Historical Society.  "French Canadian Immigrants in New Hampshire" (PDF file "New Hampshire's French-Canadian Americans" linked to the NHHS "Education|Immigration Index".

New Hampshire Maple Producers Association (NHMPA).  "Home page".  Date unknown.  Copyright NH Maple Producers 2001-2011.

Yankee Magazine.  "Memère Rousseau's Tourtière (Meat Pie)".  January 2010.

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

Snacking State-by-State: Michigan I - You look a little pasty

Now I am heading back into the Great Lakes, and asking myself what makes Michigander munchies unique in their own right. But which Michigan will I investigate: the mitten part of the Southern Peninsula, or the forests of the U.P.?  You all can guess the answer: both.

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

Michigan, like much of the Upper Midwest, has strong Native American and immigrant food traditions.  Wild rice is fairly important here, as are the foods that various immigrant groups brought with them.  In her Heartland cookbook, Marcia Adams discusses various waves of immigration into the Wolverine State, and how they shaped the cuisine there.  The first wave, with the Erie Canal, brought New Englanders, along with German, Irish and (with their Cornish pasties) Welsh settlers and their traditions; the second wave swept in more immigrants to work in logging.  The third wave was the most diverse, bringing not only African Americans during the Great Migration but also Eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners - especially Arabs (As will be noted in a future post, Detroit has the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States). [Adams 1991: 94]

As noted above, there are two peninsulas to Michigan: the southern one plastered with farms, and the upper one, with pine forests and trout [Adams 1991: 93].  Many immigrants settled in both areas, and their immigrant traditions took a strong hold.  Look at the Upper Peninsula, for example.  UPers (as they like to be called) have been influenced by their Welsh foremothers and forefathers with that most British/Welsh/Cornish of pastries, the pasty (pronounced PASS-tee, not PACE-tee).  Pasties are very common not just in the Upper Midwest - Minnesota has its own version, for example.  Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson give some background on the pasty in their book Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, a most thorough cookbook for the Upper Midwest.

The Cornish who came to work on the Iron Ranges of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and northern Minnesota in the late 1800s introduced the pasty..., a meat-and-potato-filled pastry turnover, to their Finn, Czech, Irish, Italian and Yugoslavian co-workers, who made it their standard noon meal.  A miner's lunch pail held hot coffee or soup in the bottom to warm the pasty in the top compartment.  Early pasty makers would bake a whole meal into the crust, filling one end with meat and the other with apples or cherries.  Made with a firm, lard dough that would not crumble, a good pasty was supposed to hold up if dropped down the mine shaft. [Dooley and Watson 1994: 180]

There are local variations: the Minnesotan one can be made with all beef, and eaten with ketchup.  But to make a truly Michigander pasty, it more likely than not should include pork and beef.  And do try to track down some actual suet for your pasties if you can.  I didn't, but the Michiganders seem to love it.

The recipe: Pasty (Upper Peninsula Version)

For my pasties (again, read that as PASS-tees - PASS-tees!!!), I consulted Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson's Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, the only Upper Midwestern cookbook I have ever found down here in the Mid-Atlantic.  While their recipe for Ellen Ostman's Pasty (on page 181) clearly comes from Minnesota, the authors (and probably Mrs. Ostman) give some important tips on turning this into a Michigan-style pasty: instead of using all beef, use equal parts of beef and pork.  Marcia Adams' recipe, again in Heartland, calls for ground pork and chunks of beef, so I went with that.

 

* equal parts beef and pork (you will cube the steak, and here I used ground.  I used flank steak because it was on sale, and I didn't need as much - in fact, I only needed one of these steaks).

* equal parts turnip, potato, onion and carrots (I had only the carrots on hand, from the garden.  I don't usually buy turnips so I was surprised at how cheap this one was.)

* thyme and nutmeg (had them)

* garlic (same)

* salt & pepper

* two pie crusts (the amount you would need for a covered pie - I had planned for the longest time to make a pie crust, but I have been very busy these last few weeks, and eventually I just gave up and bought ready-made pie crusts at Giant.  Don't look at me that way.  Store-bought is fine once in a while, even if it doesn't taste as good)

* butter (Mrs. Ostman's recipe calls for this - as she says [Dooley & Watson 1994: 181], her mother "was a great believer in butter.  Others add suet.")

The assembly is actually pretty easy: first, peel the veggies and dice them into small cubes.

Do the same to the steak.  I found it easiest to use cooking shears.

Mix the meat, vegetables, smashed and chopped garlic, and spices together.  I was also surprised at how little meat there was, but I shouldn't be: the Welsh and Cornish miners that brought the pasty into the field wouldn't have had a lot of money to buy meat anyway).

Roll out your pie crusts on a floured surface, and put a massive mound in the center of one side of the pie crust.  Dot the filling with butter. (I ended up with enough to make a third pasty, but didn't have an extra pie crust.  Pasty filling stir-fry anyone? It was actually quite good.)

Fold over and crimp the edges.  If holes form, patch them with little pieces of leftover dough.

Bake the pasties in the oven for about an hour at 375°F.

They should look like this.

The one thing pasty lovers agree on, according to Dooley and Watson [1994: 180], is that the pasty is correctly made "'when the juice runs off your elbow as you eat it'".  I didn't have a lot of juice - not enough butter or meat? - but since I ate it on a plate, that didn't seem to matter.  This is definitely comfort food that is an easy way to pack a bunch of leftovers - in fact a whole meal - inside a pie crust.  Many sources point out that dessert would be packed into one corner for the original Welsh TV dinner-slash-pot pie.  It is filling and rich, and is something I will try with an actual homemade pie crust next time.

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".