Spam Musubi

Aloha! I had nori, I had rice, and I had an intense craving for spam musubi after dinner at C's last night. A quick trip to the store and I had the necessary can of Spam to complete the project.

Rough rundown:

• nori (seaweed)
• 1 cup uncooked sushi rice (short grain Japanese rice, cooked with a teaspoon or so of white vinegar)
• 1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil
• 1 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sake
• 1 tablespoon sugar (white or brown)

Start cooking the rice.

Slice the Spam into 1/8 inch thick slices. What I do is stand the Spam up straight (the same way it stands upright in the can) and cut vertical slices. Mix the soy sauce, sesame oil, sake, and sugar together. Hm, I guess you could refer to those as the Four Ss. Soak the Spam slices in the sauce while you wait for the rice to finish cooking. I actually didn't have sake or Chinese rice wine, so I used Bacardi Gold. Inauthentic, you cry! Shut up, I say! It tasted d***ed good to me! Go somewhere else for your authentic recipe for fake sushi.

When the rice is done, start frying the Spam. Just make sure they're a little charred and brown on both sides, then put them back in the sauce. Remember, Spam's already cooked so it's fine to put it back in the sauce.

Mix up the rice and let it cool down until you can handle it with your bare hands. If you're getting fancy, put some Furikake in the rice. Meanwhile, cut the nori into thirds (or long strips roughly the width of the Spam).

With slightly wet hands, make oblong balls of rice and pack it together so the rice sticks. If you like things salty, you can sprinkle some salt on your hands at this point. I find the extra salt a bit much.

You'll need to judge how to wrap your musubi depending on how long your nori is. I left about an inch and a half at the end. Put the rice ball on the nori, cover with a slice of Spam, and roll up. You can seal the end with a wet finger, but the rice and spam are hot/wet, so if you just set it seam side down the steam will seal the musubi. When you've finished making a plate of them, you can cover it with plastic wrap so the musubi will sweat a bit and make the seaweed nice and soft.