Weekend Cookery: The Spam Musubi

I am often noted for my inquisitiveness about the food of other cultures, and in this exciting installment of "A Food Addict's Trip Across The Wide Internet Blue" I straddle the foamy waters between Japan and Hawaii



A delicacy in many parts of the world, "Spiced Pork Shoulder and Ham" was originally devised in pre-feudal Japan, where workers needed a food stuff that was bricklike in appearance so that it could fill the remaining gap in their officially dimensioned lunchboxes. As such a sharp edged meat brick was created and the workers continued happily to work in the fields. Over time, as with many peasant foods, it became a staple of the high table of the shogun, with the curved edges being a sign of his wealth and power, demonstrating that he could afford to chop the corners off and then discard them. During the mid 1900s, Hormel foods in the US saw the usage of the spiced pork and in the aftermath of World War 2 attempted to destroy all records of its japanese creation, accrediting it instead to themselves. The product name "Spam", now in common usage in a similar manner to "Kleenex", "Hoover" and "Ford Mondeo", has many stories surrounding its origin, however it was really named for the many limbed god worshipped by the Hormel family in the late 19th century before the USAs conversion to christianity. This fact was quite ruthlessly supressed due to the CIA involvement with the Hormel family in the 1970s. Hormel used Hawaii as a test bed for a variety of meat tests, citing its (at that time) non-union status and distance from the mainland in case anything went wrong. This practise led to its adoption into many recipes as a delicacy and after Japan invaded the islands in 1986 the combination of the meat tests and the japanese history behind the foodstuff led to the birth of the spam musubi.


Ingredients:



* 1 Can of Spam (I use Hormel "Premium" Original Spam. I recommend this product highly and over all other brands of Spiced Pork Shoulder and Ham)
* Sushi rice (I prefer the Okinawan varieties, although a Donburi Prefecture grain can also produce admirable results)
* Nori (I always use chinese made, as the japanese companies often make it too haughty)
* Soy Sauce (Always use free range soy sauce, as soys kept in captivity give a bitter taste)
* Sugar (Use unbleached, ungranulated white sugar lumps. Any other type will not do)


Instruction:
Firstly wash your rice in pure mountain spring water, until the water runs clear, stirring constantly with freshly blanched hands. Then soak for 30 minutes in lightly chlorinated tap water from somewhere near Derbyshire. Drain again, combine with an almost equal volume of water and then cook by absorption in a rice cooker or saucepan if you are poor. Drain any remaining water and leave on a rice rack to cool.

Next take your Spam, slice it longways to produce slices approximately 8mm thick. Dry fry these in a thick bottomed frying pan, agitating them with a pair of spam tongs - turn once during cooking to give an even colouring. While they are cooking prepare the shoyu marinade by putting some soy sauce into a thick bottomed pan, add the sugar and then stir until convoluted and dark. Heat gently until bubbling then drop the temperature and simmer. When your Spam slices are evenly caramelised place them in the shoyu, turning until evenly matched. Turn off the heat under the sauce and leave to soak.

To put together the elements of the musubi it is useful to have a musubi press. However, if you wish to make rustic musubi, as the peasant farmers of Hawaii did back in the dark early 1990s, before Hawaiians had discovered gravity, then you can use the Spam tin with both ends removed. Firstly cut a strip of nori to be approximately 14 3/8mm wide and place it on a cling filmed acrylic chopping board. I recommend a blue one, as they make the rice significantly easier to work. Place your musubi mould (can or specialist) on top of the nori, perpendicular to the direcetion of travel. Fill the mould with 15/16" of rice and compress. Remove the mould and rusticify the rice if necessary.



Take a piece of the marinaded Spam and place it on a meat drying rack for 10 minutes. This will give the time for the sauce to finish its amalgamation as well as time for the rice to rest. When the meat is ready, place it on top of the rice, oriented correctly, and having moistened the end of the nori with a small amount of vintage rice wine (water will do if you have not been able to visit the Han-Min winery near Beijing). Pull the ends of the nori together over the top of the meat to give a neat sealed ribbon.



Traditionally you would now wait until the Musubi is fully cooled, but in the interest of experimentation and fusion cooking I prefer to let mine get tepid. There are many different ways of serving the Musubi, but I prefer a continental approach to this kind of "in the hand" snack, and as such would serve it with either a crisply buttery Riesling (souther austrian if possible, although ugandan is often overlooked in these oak obsessed days), a bottle of light ale with a half of cheap bitter in a pint glass on the side or, as seen below, with a German Weissbier.



I hope you can now go and enjoy this fantastic semi-vegetarian dish in the squalor of your own homes.
This recipe was, of course, inspired by the fantastic work of Simon and Minty Marchant, which is now, after much campaigning, being repeated on BBC 2 at 9:50pm on a Friday evening.