A Healthier Spam Musubi

Christmas came and went in the Kikukat house.  All decorations have since been put away, and the tree has gone to the tree graveyard.  I can't believe I waited until I was on vacation to get sick.  I managed to avoid catching a cold all semester, yet I somehow had to be sick at Christmas.  Being sick certainly put a damper on my enjoyment.  Bleccchhhh.  I'm a little better now, but I am still hacking away.  I hope to be better by New Years, especially since I've been tasked with making a bunch of desserts for a party at CAE's house.

Since we are on vacation, the Ds have been home with me and are always looking for food.  We have a pantry full of food they can have, but they never seem to like my suggestions.  I guess even Cup O Noodle gets boring.

D1 isn't too picky about food.  Her food range is huge so she can usually find something to eat.  D2 is my picky eater.  She seldom wants what we have.  For a quick lunch, I've driven up the road to Ainaola Mart to buy the Ds mini laulau plate, but I can't do that every day.

One thing both Ds like to eat is Spam musubi.  Spam Musubi is such a decadent dish.  Sure, it may have humble beginnings with the Spam, a relatively inexpensive filler (rice), and a thin seaweed wrapper, but it is certainly decadent in terms of taste.

The easiest place to get it is 7-11.  They seem to have an endless supply.  Unfortunately, we don't live close to any of the four 7-11s in Hilo.  L & L Drive In also makes Spam musubi, but we don't live near any of those establishments either. 

The next, and obvious choice, is to make it at home.  It takes some time (waiting for the rice to cook), but homemade Spam musubi is truly better than what you can buy at 7-11, L & L or any okazu-ya.  We make ours a fraction healthier by substituting some of the white rice with brown rice.  Most kids don't care much for brown rice, but it's barely noticeable in a 1:3 proportion.  Some places do not do a good job of seasoning the Spam.  I've had Spam musubi where the Spam was just fried.  When you make it at home, you can go through the effort of cooking the Spam in a generous amount of teriyaki sauce.  When putting together the musubi, we also sprinkle on some furikake (Ds like katsuo or ebi flavor).  Kikukat Mom adds a squirt of neri ume (paste) for another taste dimension.  Some places will go the extra step and bread and fry the Spam (Spam katsu musubi) or add a thin sheet of fried egg into the musubi.  I noticed that KTA will make Spam musubi with beautiful edamame rice.  The possibilities are endless!

As the cook, there is also lots of latitude in presentation.  I have a mold which enables me to wrap a long Spam musubi (2 slices of Spam at a time).  Once wrapped, I cut the long piece in half to make 2 Spam-length musubis.  From there, you can either cut at a 45-degree angle (pictured) or just a flat cut (cut each half into halves or thirds).  The 45-degree angle cut is my choice for a platter.  The angles look very elegant.

In addition to the stay-at-home lunches which can be satisfied with Spam musubi, Spam musubi is a great potluck dish.  I'm saying this since we are in the midst of the holiday party season.  Its not hard to make a bunch of Spam musubi for a party.  If I'm taking Spam musubi to a potluck in a container, I would go with the flat cut in thirds, especially if I know there will be lots of other goodies to eat.  Leftovers can be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, placed in a ziploc bag, and reheated for about 15 seconds in the microwave.  The key is to wrap them as tightly as possible and store them in an air-tight an environment as you can manage...double ziploc or ziploc in a sealed container.

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Spam Musubi

     1 rice cooker cup brown rice

     3 rice cooker cups white rice

     water

     1 can spam

     2 tbsp brown sugar, packed

     2 tbsp shoyu

     1 tbsp mirin

     furikake (optional)

     neri ume (optional)

     5 sheets nori (roasted seaweed sheet)

Wash rice and cook as usual in electric rice cooker.  While rice is cooking, slice Spam into 10 slices.  Fry on both sides in a skillet.  Add brown sugar, shoyu, and mirin.  Cook until liquid is gone. Dampen spam musubi mold with water and proceed according to the type of spam musubi mold you are using: 

If using Spam musubi mold with flat packing plates, insert lower plate into mold, smooth side up.  Pack half-full with rice and press down with other packing plate.  Sprinkle furikake, if using.  Squeeze neri ume, if using.  Place Spam on rice.  Add more rice to fill mold.  Pack with packing plate.  Remove lower packing plate and center mold on sheet of nori. 

If using Spam musubi mold with single packing plate, center empty Spam musubi mold on sheet of nori.  Pack half-full with rice and press down with packing plate.  Sprinkle furikake, if using.  Squeeze neri ume, if using.  Place Spam on rice.  Add more rice to fill mold.  Pack with packing plate.  Pressing down on packing plate, slice mold up, leaving rice on nori.  

Roll tightly with nori.  Wrap in waxed paper.  Let set at least 10 minutes before cutting with a dampened knife.  Keep knife damp in order to minimize sticking.

On January 2, 2015, I will be busy watching my beloved Huskies kick some Pistol Pete butt in the Cactus Bowl.  Hope Coach Peterson will be able to win his first bowl game as a Husky coach.  Ironically, the game will be played in Tempe, AZ (guessing Sun Devil stadium).  ASU is one of D1s choices for college...and probably my wish for her...sorry, Wildcats.  Tempe is just much more convenient to the airport.    

The Ds, while grateful for gifts they received at Christmas, seemed much happier helping Kikukat Mom and Dad with their gifts. 

Missy and D1

Tuffy and D2

Since this will be my last post of 2014, I'd like to wish everyone a safe and happy closing out of 2014.  I'll be here in 2015, looking forward to bigger and brighter things.  Things should definitely be brighter soon for me...going to the big city to get my eyes checked out by a glaucoma specialist.  I have Kikukat Mom and Dad to thank for this.

Thank you all for reading my blog!  See you in 2015!

Sticky Chicken

It was another week of mostly rain, so I still wasn't in the mood for salad.  Kamehameha Day ended up being a soggy holiday, and I certainly didn't do anything special. I just stayed home and tried not to pick at my temporarily capped tooth.  Now that my tooth has been permanently capped, I have another problem. . .in the process of applying the permanent crown, the tooth next to it sustained a fracture, and now I'm dreading having to repeat the entire process again, not to mention chewing gingerly for another 2 week span.  Shit!

While I've been restraining myself from picking at my tooth, a few of the Kikukat house denizens have been stricken with World Cup fever.  The Help is cheering for the team from Argentina.  D2 seems obsessed with Robben and the Netherlands.  She was thrilled when they upset defending champion Spain.  Aki is cheering for Brazil, the land of his ancestors, and Shaka, thinking waaaaay outside the cage, wants Germany to take it.  D1 wants nothing to do with World Cup, and I'm with D1.  I'm glad most of the cheering and game-watching of the opening fanfare occurred while I was at work.

For the past two weeks, I worked as a paraprofessional with students who, per IEP team decision,  qualified (due to regression and recoupment issues) for  extended school year (ESY).  I had the opportunity to work with students whom I would generally not see in my normal teaching line during the school year.  It was an eye-opening experience, and I have new-found respect for educational assistants.  While teachers design instruction, paraprofessionals are often tasked with maintaining consistent implementation of the actual instruction.  These past two weeks entailed lots of repetition and giving lots of wait time.  I also did some dribbling and shooting (basketball skills).  And like teachers and school administrators, paraprofessionals are also terribly underpaid.  Mercifully, I did not need to change a diaper or bring home any soiled underwear for washing (I did this when I was at a local elementary school a few years ago.  A parent cried and thanked me for treating her son as if he was my own.  I opted not to tell her I let one of my own kids eat a can of corn for dinner.)

My stint as a paraprofessional ended on Friday, and today I'm at a workshop with teachers and administrators.  This workshop goes on for four awful days.  Might as well be four weeks. . . I don't know how I'm gonna make it through the next few days.  I'm pretty sure the students at ESY were better company!  The students are always fun. . .adults?  Not so much.

So for the next few days, I'll be cooking stuff like this sticky chicken wing dish which can be thrown together quickly and uses ingredients I already have on hand.  

I got the original version of this recipe from Food & Wine magazine.  I eventually do try recipes I find in magazines, but when I came across this recipe, I actually went to the market, bought chicken wings, and cooked this for dinner that night.   While The Help liked the chicken, I thought it was too spicy for my taste.  Tweaking the recipe, I reduced the amount of ginger and chili pepper so it was more palatable for me.  Now its mild enough where even D2 can eat it (D1 can eat anything spicy so the original version was fine for her).  Leftovers reheat nicely.

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Sticky Chicken (Mild)

     2-3 lbs chicken wings
     1 tbsp ginger, grated
     2 chili peppers
     2 star anise
     1 cinnamon stick (2-3" long)
     1/3 c shoyu
     1/3 c shaoxing wine
     1/3 c water
     3 tbsp sugar
     3 tbsp mirin
     3 tbsp oyster sauce

Fry chicken wings in a non stick skillet over medium heat for 5 minutes on each side.  Add ginger, chili peppers, star anise and cinnamon.  Stir fry for a minute.  Add remaining ingredients.  Cover and reduce heat to low.  Simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove cover and increase heat to medium.  Cook for 15 minutes or until sauce is reduced and thickened.

Never Enough: Hijiki

Before I launch into the normal chit chat of my post, I'd like to give a big ALOHA to SN and the Ono Kine Recipes page on Facebook for sharing recipes from my blog.  The first 2 recipes shared were Korean Long Rice Salad and Warabi-Kamaboko Salad.  My buddy Dee messaged me and told me Ono Kine Recipes had posted two of my recipes.  I HAD to "like" the page after that!  If you have a facebook account, meander over to the Ono Kine Recipes page.  They have lots of recipes, including lots of yummy desserts. Prior to summer getting underway, I made a list of foods I wanted to try making.  So far, I made only 1 thing from the list:  Zoku pops.  I have not managed to make anything more because I keep getting sidetracked.  The market hasn't been on my side either.  Gravlax was way up high on my list, but I can't seem to find fresh wild salmon.  Another item high on that list was sponge drops, soft vanilla cookies with a creamy filling sandwiched between two cookies.  The cleanup for that will be hell. There was a holiday this past week. . .Kamehameha Day, and since I was already on vacation, the only difference was that D2 was home with me.  Doing an internship at a federal jobsite, D1 did not get Kamehameha Day off.  There were celebrations going on in Hilo and in Kohala, but I had no part of that.  Instead, I stayed home and cooked (and cleaned too). What I ended up cooking were a bunch of snacks and side dishes.  The 8-pound brisket The Help smoked on Sunday lasted us well into the week, so I put my effort into snacks for the family as well as other things we could eat with the brisket.  And even though we stopped eating the brisket, a huge chunk of it lives on in the freezer.  I'm gonna need to work up a lot of nerve to tackle it for round 2.  Harumphffff. One of the side dishes I made, which has absolutely no coherence with smoked brisket, is hijiki (seaweed).  I knew there was no chance of D2 touching smoked brisket so I figured I'd make her something to have along with microwaved frozen rice.  D2 loves hijiki, and I am certain many people have enjoyed hijiki at a sit-down Japanese restaurant at some point in their lives.  Even Japanese restaurants in small town Hilo serve it regularly.  Hijiki is often presented as one of the small morsels diners are served as a complimentary appetizer.  And no matter which Japanese restaurant you go to, the tidbit-sized portion is never enough.  During spring break, I took the Ds and D2's friend KN to Restaurant Miwa for lunch.  At the end of the meal, after D2 finished her udon and my hijiki, she announced that the next time we ate there, she would just order a bowl of hijiki and some rice.  And that's exactly the reason why making hijiki at home is such a good idea. . .you can eat all you want!  Restaurant hijiki usually just contains seasoned seaweed.  When you make it at home, you can add in other stuff.  Hijiki is not difficult to make, and it takes just a little forethought.  Aside from soaking the hijiki, the most time-consuming part is chopping the aburage and konnyaku.  Because everything gets cooked in one pan, clean up is also minimal.  click on recipe title for printable recipe Hijiki      1 pkg (2 oz) hijiki (wash and soak in water for 30 minutes or according to package directions)      1 tbsp oil      2 aburage, finely chopped      1 piece konnyaku, sliced thin      3 tbsp sugar      1/4 c mirin      1/4 c shoyu      2 tbsp sesame seeds Heat oil in pan.  Fry aburage till crispy.  Squeeze out water from hijiki.  Add hijiki, konnyaku, sugar, mirin, and shoyu to aburage.  Cook until liquid is absorbed.  Mix in sesame seeds.

Fried Tofu with Chives

Another food that comes to mind when I think about what Mom cooked is fried tofu with chives.  It was something that was hurriedly made after a long day of work, and while it was something very simple, I recall being happy to see it on the table.

There are several keys to finding success when cooking this dish.  The first, and most important, is safety.  Like anything containing water, tofu will splatter when it meets the hot oil in a skillet.  A trick to minimizing your chances of being scalded is to slice the tofu and pack it on paper towels the day before you plan to cook it.  While this could definitely be done quickly just before cooking, allowing the tofu to drain overnight is preferable.

The second trick is to use garlic chives.  Garlic chives have flat blades, rather than cylindrical stalks.  Cut the chives in 1-inch pieces.  Any shorter, and they will get lost.  Any longer, and they will be cumbersome to eat (you might resemble a catfish at some point).

Because Mom was pressed for time, we usually just ate the fried tofu with a generous squirt of shoyu.  But if you can spare an extra 2 minutes, make the sauce.  The sauce will give people the impression you slaved all day!

 
click on recipe title for printable recipe
Mom's Fried Tofu

1 block tofu
oil
handful garlic chives, cut in in 1" pieces
1 tbsp shoyu

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tsp mirin

1 tsp shao hsing wine

Begin the night before by slicing tofu block in half.  Slice each half into 1/2" thick slices.  Pack slices between paper towels and refrigerate overnight.  Heat a thin layer of oil in a skillet (no more than 1/4" deep).  While oil is heating, combine shoyu, oyster sauce, mirin and shao hsing wine in a small bowl.  Set aside.  Add tofu slices to heated oil in a single layer, frying in 2 batches if necessary.  Fry until tofu is golden brown and edges are crispy.  Turn over and fry other side in same manner.   Sprinkle chives over top of tofu, continuing to fry tofu until golden brown.  Remove tofu and any chives sticking to tofu to a serving platter.  Turn off heat, and carefully add sauce.  It will sizzle and sputter.  Allow to bubble for a minute, then pour over tofu slices.  Serve.