Okay, yes it has been two weeks since we lasted posted anything but we've had a lot going on. A couple of days can be blamed for internet routing going kaput. Another few days can be blamed in that we were out of town. Last weekend we went to KY to be with my family for my nephew Liam's birthday. This year he wanted an Iron Chef birthday party with Hawaiian food as the theme. This was a great idea!!!
Anyone one who knows anything about Hawaiian foods knows that SPAM is a big deal on the islands. Spam in Hawaii is big deal like BBQ is a big deal in Memphis, like wine is a big deal in France, like Pad Thai is a big deal in Thailand. There are family recipes for Spam that get handed down through the generations. Alas, many of us know not of the importance of Spam to Hawaii. Tracy says she had a coworker in LA who made some killer Spam fried rice.
My entry for competition was a variation of the snack food Spam Musubi. I thought for sure that someone would throw in a Spam fried rice dish to pit Spam against Spam but I was the only one. Would this be a good thing or bad?
I spent a few weeks before the competition searching Japanese markets in the Nashville area for a musubi mold like many of the recipes use but struck out. One market had a neat sushi kit that with a little creativity would serve my needs and thus making the recipe my variation. Two weeks ago I tested out the mold by making a batch of sushi rice, fried some slices of Spam, and used strips of nori seaweed. I wanted to get an idea of how hard it was to go through the assembly process and how labor intensive it would be start to finish. Here is the mold with the two halves filled with cooked rice and a slice of Spam cut in thirds. 
Next I measured out the nori to be cut into strips. Nothing exact, just kinda eyeballed it. 
Now that the rice halves have been pressed together with a piece of Spam in the middle they popped out of the mold pretty easily but need care in handling. Here they are ready to be rolled in the nori wrapping. The middle one started to fall apart on me. 
So here is the test batch kept real simple and ready to eat. I used just a little srirache as a dipping sauce. Spam + Srirache = Good. 
Test batch was successful so I was confident to go with this recipe for Spam Musubi for the competition. I got to use my mom's gas stove to fry up the Spam. I could get used to a gas stove. Very nice! The sauce pan on the left is the mixture of soy sauce, mirin and sugar simmering away. That sauce turned out to be one of the best parts of this recipe. I would make another batch of the sauce just to pour over plain rice or Asian noodles. 
Here in this assembly I decided to cut the musubi in half for easier bite sized pieces. 
Later in the evening it was time for the competition and here is how I plated up the musubi for the judges. My sister Joey let me use these dishes that were our grandmother's that she had bought in Hawaii and the flowers also came from Joey's garden. 
The winning plate...... 
Nope! I got spanked in the competition. Third place went to a grilled pineapple dessert with Nutella sauce. Second place went to Joey's husband Bryant with his variation on a Portuguese bean soup that is common in Hawaii (interesting history of two food cultures combining). This soup was very good. First place stole the show! My mom entered a pork tenderloin cooked in pineapples and soy sauce and served with rice that contained pineapple and spices. That dish did not last long.
Other desserts included a white chocolate bark that contained macadamia nuts, coconut and pieces of dried pineapple, a pineapple cream tart and a pineapple macadamia nut cream pie. The pie was awesome! 
This competition was a lot of fun even if I did not win. My consolation was that several people told me that they knew Spam was important and the were surprised no one else entered a Spam dish. I left the sushi kit with Liam and Kate since they love to make sushi. They will get some fun out of it and that makes me happy too. I wonder what Liam will chose as the theme for next year?