Post #620103 by Professor G on Sat, Jan 7, 2012 11:02 AM

I really, really wish I could blame this all on MadDog Mike. There’s a guy who loves his Spam. Based on his posts, I’d say there’s a guy who loves his dead pig, period. Somehow, his excitement was contagious over the miles, infecting a brain in the Wastelands with the need, or dare I say compulsion, to cook Spam.

I’d just finished working out a nice rumaki when I stumbled across the dang Spam thread and it happened: the idea of preparing Spam in the style of rumaki got into my head and has haunted me for weeks. I’m confident I can make it work if I ever have to and that should be enough. Why wouldn’t that be enough?

It isn’t enough. I have to know. The other day, the urge grew too strong: I bought the Spam.

Typically, I’m pretty literal about food definitions, so to really be rumaki, bacon should be wrapped around marinated chicken or maybe duck liver and a water chestnut. Anything else is simply bacon-wrapped anything-else. I’ll allow Spam because, like the bird livers, it needs some work to make it desirable, but I’ll still waffle a bit and call it rumaki-style Spam (Spam en Brochette a la mode du Rumaki?) just to keep what conscience I have left clean . . . clean-ish, anyway.

I started with something like my normal Rumaki recipe, only with Spam. . .

1 can of Spam, cut into 1 inch cubes
4 oz can water chestnuts, drained
12 slices bacon, halved crosswise
1 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin
1 tsp sri racha
1 crushed garlic clove
1 Tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

. . . all of which is real nice, but I threw in 1 chopped jalapeno, an ounce or so of hoisin and the last of my Healthy Boy brand sweet soy with a drizzle of yuzu juice. That’s right, I used yuzu on Spam. Do you hear that whirring sound? It’s very sincere Pacific Rim food snobs spinning in their metaphorical graves. I may have splashed a dab of fish sauce into the pungent hell-brew, as well. After a 36-hour marination, I wrapped them up and took them to the grill.

Do you hear an increase in the whirring? That’s my culinary school instructors joining the Pacific Rim food snobs in their figurative casket pirouettes. This stuff is absolutely, perhaps even freakin’, delicious. I did these on a standard issue gas grill and had to stay alert in case of flare-ups, but other than that, easy sailing. They’re much easier to handle than the livers and don’t have the bitterness associated with innards; in terms of texture and richness, however, they are quite similar. Like real rumaki, two or three is plenty. I serve them with straight sri racha, because subtlety at this stage of the game seems a bit pointless.

So, MDM, if you’re out there--and you are out there, although possibly wishing to disassociate yourself from the entire project--this one’s for you. It is tasty, vaguely Asian, completely inauthentic, wrapped in bacon, doesn’t have any nori involved, and looks nice on a plate. You can’t beat it with a log of centrifuged pork product.

[ Edited by: Professor G 2012-01-07 13:23 ]

[ Edited by: Professor G 2012-01-07 13:24 ]