Hawaiian Appetizer
SPAM AND EGG MUSUBI
INGREDIENTS
1 cup sushi rice*
4 Nori (seaweed) sheeta
4 eggs
1½ tablespoons mirin**
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
no stick spray
1 12-ounce can SPAM(tm)
4 teaspoons furikake seasoning*** (½ teaspoon at a time) (optional)
* = Substitute rices are: arborio, pudding, short-grain white, risotto, or cauliflower
** = Substitutes are: rice wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, white wine, sake, or dry sherry
*** = May be found online Or 2 teaspoons crumbled Nori and 2 teaspoons sesame seed.
SPECIAL UTENSILS
musubi mold (can be found online) or empty SPAM can.
2 12″-or-wider pans
Serves 8. Takes 1 hour.
PREPARATION
Cook rice according to instructions on package. Cut Nori sheets into strips, each one about 2½”-to-3″ wide, Add eggs to mixing bowl. Scramble thoroughly with whisk or fork. Add mirin, soy sauce, and sugar to small mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until sugar dissolves completely.
Cut SPAM into 8 equal slices along its width, each one about ⅜” wide, Spray large (12″) pan with no-stick spray. Add mixed eggs. Cover and fry at low-medium heat for 5 minutes or until eggs set and achieve your desired level of doneness. Remove eggs and set aside.
Add SPAM slices to second 12″ pan. Fry at medium-heat for 3 minutes or until bottom of SPAM slices become crisp and start to brown. Flip SPAM slices. Fry at medium-heat for 1 minute 30 seconds or until new bottom of SPAM slices become crisp and start to brown. Reduce heat to low. Let pan cool for 1 minute. Ladle mirin/soy/sugar sauce over SPAM. Cook SPAM for 30 seconds on each side or until sauce thickens.
Put scrambled eggs on flat surface. Use knife and musubi mold to make 8 egg cutouts that have the same shape as the SPAM slices
Put Nori strip shiny side down on flat surface. Put mold on the middle of the Nori strip. (The length of the mold should stick out just a bit from the sides of the strip.) Place SPAM in mold. Put an egg cutout on SPAM in mold. Sprinkle egg with ½ teaspoon furikake. Put ¼ cup cooked rice into the mold. Level rice with spoon. Press down evenly with musubi mold until rice becomes molded and compact.
Wrap Nori strip around stack. Put some grain of rice on the Nori strip where it comes together. Gently press the ends of the Nori strip together to make a seal. This is the musubi. Gently flip the musubi so that the Nori seal is on the bottom.
TIDBITS
1) SPAM and Egg Musubi looks like a bar of soap. This is no accident!
2) The ancient Sumerians, way back before your parents we born, loved to be clean. But how could they? Dust storms stormed through the land depositing layers of dust deep enough on the inhabitants to impress even the most ardent archeologist.
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3) Then on July 3, 2473 BC, a textile worker cried out to the earth goddess Ki, “My life sucks.” “Yes, child,” said Ki, “what troubles you so?”
“ I hate my name. It’s Ninsun. It means ‘wild lady cow.’”
“Oh my gosh,” said Ki, “from now on you shall be known as ‘Betty.’ It means ‘God is my oath.”
“Cool.” But Betty still fretted.
“What else disturbs you, child?”
4) “I want to be beautiful. I wish to attract, Anzu the hunter. How can I do that when I’m perpetually caked in dirt?”
“Ah,” said the goddess, you are a textile worker, are you not?”
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5) Synapses fired lickety split in Betty’s brain, for she was smarter than the average Sumerian textile worker. “Aha! “The fatty lanolin from the wool vats would work wicked wonders as a cleaning agent and when added to lanoliney water would create liquid soap. I can wash myself clean. I can get Anzu to be my husband. Cowabunga!”
6) Betty and Anzu gave birth to a baby girl, Nanshe. Nanshe next noticed nicely that when the liquid in the soapy dried out it became soap bars. The Soap-Nori Road would be born the next morning. This is why we know of Nanshe.
7) Nanshe also sagely saw something soap shaped, but with egg and SPAM wrapped in Nori would be quite exciting and tasty. Especially so, when you considered that the average Sumerian meal consisted of bread, porridge, bread, and porridge.
8) But it took years to trade for nori on the Soap-Nori Road. And there was no such thing as SPAM. However, the SPAM-and-Egg Musubi dream never died out.
9) SPAM would be invented in 1937, and SPAM and Egg Musubi came about in the early 1980s.
10) We are living in a golden age.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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