born and raised in hawaii, spam musubi is a classic treat that ive turned many of my round eye spam fearing friends on to

if you’ve been to hawaii you are familiar with spam musubi. everyone has their own method of making it, since my friends enjoy my version i’ve decided to share it. i see a lot of people who cook their spam in shoyu (soy sauce) but i prefer using a marinade. i don’t usually make it with tamago (sweet egg) but sometimes i do.

Ingredients:

• 1 can spam (i use 25% less sodium)
• 1 pack sushi nori (dried seaweed)
• 3 cups of cooked japanese sticky rice (sushi rice or sticky medium grain)
• 1 cup shoyu (i use to prefer kikkoman or aloha shoyu, aloha has a much higher sugar concentration, kikkoman is salty)
  

  i have gotten several “2 cups???” response. i modified it to say 1 cup. i generally use 1-2 cups simply because when im done marinating the spam i do not throw the marinade away. I will generally use it once or 2x again for either beef and chicken (i will toss it after i put chicken in it).

• 1/2 cup brown sugar (use more if you prefer a sweeter soy base)
• 3 cloves garlic minced
• 1 bunch of scallions diced
• 1-2 tablespoons ginger shredded
• 1-2 teaspoon sesame seed oil
• 1 serrano pepper minced (if you don’t like spicy don’t use this)

Instructions (marinade & spam prep):

1. In a medium sized bowl mix Shoyu, sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved.
2. add garlic, scallions, ginger, pepper, and sesame seed oil to the marinade and stir to mix together.
3. slice spam into 10 slices one way then cut across other way to form 20 square pieces.
4. add spam to bowl and allow it to marinate for at least 4-6 hours.
5. fry spam in pan.

Instructions (tamago):

1. beat 4 eggs in bowl, add 1-2 tablespoons of sugar (or as much or little as you like for taste) .
2. fry egg in pan with oil, don’t scramble or overcook.
3. pat oil off egg and chop into squares similar to the spam size.

Instructions (creating the musubi):

Some people use the actual spam can to shape the rice and spam but i find that messy. i have on a few occasions just used my hand, also messy. you can easily online or at most asian supermarkets buy a “spam musubi” maker. it looks like a rectangle. I have both a wooden and plastic one and tend to use the plastic one more as it just seems to be easier and faster. some makers are as large as 1 piece of spam, some as large as 2. i have the large one. all this really does is press the rice into compact rectangle shape.

1. use spam musubi maker to make enough rice squares as you have spam. some people use a lot of rice others less. i like to use about as much rice as equal to or double the size of the spam.
2. cut the nori to whatever size you like. i prefer my nori to be the same width as my musubi.
3. place rice square on nori, then the spam, then the egg. “roll” the stacked musubi to be wrapped.

I have been meaning to make this post for quite some time. I took the pictures many months ago but as usual, never got around to it. several people have asked me how i make my curry so i decided to take the time to put a step by step instruction.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups steamed sticky (japanese/sushi) rice
• 1/2 large onion (sub: 1 medium)
• 2 large potatoes (sub: 4-5 small-medium)
• 3 large carrots (sub: 4-5 small-medium)
• 2- 4 garlic cloves (use as little as you want, joel and i love garlic)
• 16oz cubed beef/chicken/pork/fish (i prefer beef)
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 tbsp crushed salt
  • 1 tbsp ground pepper
• 3 cups water
• 1 box S&B Golden Curry Roux – 3.5oz (i use hot)

Instructions – Vegetable Prep:

1. Prep your vegetables. cube potatoes and slice carrots (i prefer carrot ovals).

2. soak carrots and potatoes in 2 cups of water. this prevents the potatoes from oxidizing and turning brown. you will use this water later so don’t throw out. the water collects the starch from the potatoes so its good for a natural thickener for the curry.

3. halve your onion then cut cubed/square slices.



4. dice garlic

5. cook your rice. (hopefully you have a rice cooker, and if you don’t, you already know how to steam your own rice.. if you don’t, learn how. if you use uncle bens or any instant rice you deserve to be shot)

Instructions – Meat Prep:

1. in a large bowl mix the dry ingredients: 1/2 cup flour, 1 tbsp crushed salt, 1tbsp ground pepper.

2. in a frying pan heat a few tbsp’s of oil (olive or vegetable). add cubed meat into dry mix and coat it. do not put it all in at once, the meat will soak up too much flour if you do it this way. coat a few pieces and sear/brown them quickly on both sides. don’t try to cook all the meat at once, this will diminish the heat in the pan and make it harder to sear the outside. do a few pieces at a time for best results.




3. place the meat aside to rest. meat will continue to cook and tenderize itself as it settles.

Instructions – Mixing & Cooking Curry:

1. heat to medium-high a tbsp of vegetable oil in a large pot. add cubed onions and a pinch of salt and ground pepper. saute for about a minute.

2. add garlic to onion. i add the garlic later because garlic burns a lot quicker. saute for a few minutes until slightly brown.

3. add rested seared meat and mix. mix and saute for a minute or 2, stirring very frequently.

4. with a strainer, pour the 2 cups of water from the soaking potatoes and carrots into the pot (don’t add vegetables yet just water).

5. allow water to come to a quick small boil.
6. break apart the curry roux into smaller pieces and disperse them through the pot evenly. constantly mix your water to allow the roux to melt and form the gravy. make sure you’re constantly stirring else the curry will start to burn and stick to the bottom and you will have chunks of curry roux not blended well.



7. the curry will appear very thick and boil, add the remaining 1/2-1 cup of water and stir well. it might appear that its not enough water and the curry is ridiculously thick. not to worry. DO NOT ADD more water as it will water down the taste of your curry. the vegetables will add a lot of water once its cooked in the curry.

8. once the curry is nicely mixed and thick reduce heat to low-medium add the carrots and potatoes. it is not necessary to mix the curry at this point. You want to keep the meat on the bottom just add vegetables to the top and with your mixing spoon press it down to soak under the curry.

9. be sure to cover your curry to prevent all the water from evaporating. cook on low-medium heat for about 10 minutes stirring every few minutes to keep the curry from burning on the bottom. after about 10 minutes reduce heat to low.
10. at this point allow your curry to stew on low for 1-2 hours. you can check on your curry as often as you want to stir. i stir every 10 minutes or so. stewing allows the meat to become extremely tender which i find very important especially when using beef. when using other meats you don’t have to stew for nearly as long.

when your meal is ready you will find that the vegetables added a rich amount of flavorful water to the curry and its not as thick as it was before. the flour in the beef also adds to the thickness and you don’t have to add any cornstarch. i try to avoid cornstarch as much as possible as i find it adds more of a gelatinous texture instead of a rich creamy texture.

i usually eat curry in a bowl, a scoop or 2 of rice on the bottom and i pour my curry over, but i usually serve to others on a plate.

mmm now go make curry! 

i am by no means a chef or pasty chef of any kind but i do love to cook and bake nonetheless.  i have owe’d joel "obligation cupcakes" for some time now and finally decided to make them.  we decided on red velvet cupcakes with a whipped butter cream cheese frosting.

red velvet makes me think of christina so in honor of her and of course joel since they are his obligation cupcakes, i took some pictures to share.

Yah yah yah… so its been a while.  A few things to note.

• Went to Napa and Sonoma Valleys for the first time.  Had an amazing time.
• Became a bridesmaid and found a lifelong friend i adore!
• Threw a successful BBQ – My BBQ’s are always delicious food fests
• Installed drapes for both my windows and my doorless closet (it looks like a purple theater!)
• Proud Owner of a 42″ Panasonic HDTV Plasma TV (it was a christmas gift from Joel)
• Saw Cirque De Soleil: Ka in Las Vegas and it is officially my favorite Cirque show.
• I’m still employed at CBA… Erik ditched me, we’re even now!

Holy shit I have done virtually nothing so far in 2006.

Balls.

i love to cook and i love to bake. last christmas i baked cookies for everyone along with brownies and cornbread, wrapped them up and handed them out as gifts. this year i did the same.

nina, who is currently attending the pastry academy in napa, is also a baker. she made these incredible snickerdoodles light and gave me the recipe. i decided this year to do it right. i spent a good amount of money on pure bakeware, probably close to about 300.00. nina also introduced me to silpat baking pads and cooking by weight. christina says im british now!

id have to definitely say nina has it right. cooking by weight completely changes the outcome of your baked goods. i baked 4 kinds of cookies for christmas. snickerdoodles light (i love you nina), delicious peanut butter cookies, spicy oatmeal raisin cookies of goodness, and ultimate chocolate chip cookies. they were a hit and i love baking.

if you’d like any of these recipes, leave me a comment and ill gladly hook it up im too lazy to post them!

so i’ve been horrible at committing to my blog as of late. you ever have soo much to say you don’t know where to start so you just don’t bother? Well thats pretty much my situation. I kept staring at an empty page willing myself to write and i became overwhelmed with thoughts.

so regardless of my 101 reasons why not to post, i’m just going to start from here.

happy belated christmas and new year!!

i hope all of you had a wonderful holiday, i definitely liked mine. i got amazing gifts (ill have to dedicate a post to all my new toys — i swear i will!). i celebrated christmas with joel and his awesome family. we had christmas eve dinner at his father’s, then christmas day at his grandmothers (moms side). every time i have dinner with his family i feel blessed. i think joel has been so lucky to have grown up with the family that he has. I was surprised at the amount of gits joel’s mom and tif got us!

New years was pretty pleasant. We did it small this year.. VERY small. like 3 small. I cooked up a ton of lumpia and i made a delicious oven pot roast. we shimmied on over to sean’s around 7, got there at 8 and spent the nite away drinking good wine, eating good food, and just talking. I don’t get to spend much time with sean much anymore but when we do get to hang out, its always fun to have a serious conversation where people can actually explore their own ideas and just discuss. i like toilet humor just as much as the next person, but now and again its nice to talk your age with peers who don’t have their heads up their asses. We talked till like 7am til we finally drove back home to watch a few episodes of bleach and fall asleep.

i think we had a good start to 2006 thanks for having us over to your cool place sean, and i hope you had a good new years too.

yah so.. i kept wanting to update a post but i wanted to update the pictures along with the posts.. so i finally have all the pictures now so ill actually.. make a few extra posts with pictures!

guess i should fix my gallery too.

its been a pretty damn busy time since my last post so ill make it easy!

• overcame stomach flu
• saw coldplay live at verizon amphitheater
• celebrated my birthday with great friends
• will missed my birthday because he was carjacked due to his other crappy friends
• reactivated my wow account
• realized that wow still isn’t fun
• I’m still not any nicer. i still hate everyone
• started my japanese class
• learned and memorized all my hiragana characters
• capable of writing japanese words and sentences phonetically
• bought a new easel that doesn’t suck
• finished sam’s painting
• bought dungeon siege 2 to play with ppl i like
• capable of utilizing student discounts
• bought a new tumi bag for schoolbooks
• cut down drastically on caffeine
• eating a lot more healthy
• hung out with my sister while she visited for labor day weekend
• have 2 new friends i really like that are female
• still waiting for my wheels to come in from japan
• cleaned out my tivo and added a ton of new shows for fall lineup
• completely caught up on old tivo shows
• still hate driving in monday morning traffic from irvine
• joel now owns 3 pairs of jeans he wears regularly
• bryans moving out
• i like my life
• mom wong went in for surgery to get her gall bladder removed
• tiff gave me gir for my birthday
• hoping for new action/adventure or rpg multiplayer games to be released and not suck

so. thats kinda it. in no particular order. now i need to make a list of things i need to accomplish. pictures will be up soon.

since we have gotten back from hawaii, it just feels like theres never a moment to rest. after we got back from hawaii, the following weekend was filled with food, friends and family.

friday, july 29 – dinner at lawrys
saturday, july 30 – dinner at joel’s mom
sunday, july 31 – joel went to marks bachelors party, i did laundry

lucky for us, the train kept going.

thursday, august 4 – houstons with the koreans, sam, dave, tommy, jean, jeff(i think thats his name)
friday, august 5 – ate at malo with nina and chad, this was nina’s last weekend in la before heading off to law school
saturday, august 6 – happy birthday nuggie! we ate at caspian, they have persian dancers for entertainment.
sunday, august 7 – joels rescheduled birthday dinner with his pops at bandera in newport beach.

oh my god im so dinnered out!!

this coming weekend so far has will’s birthday dinner at gyu-kaku scheduled as well as mark’s wedding. joel is actually a groomsman in the wedding.

fall semester starts at the end of the month. and im stupid enough to start playing wow again. i dont have any idea where im going to find the time. ive been working on our guild website, as we have taken the leap to a persistent gaming guild.

my car wheels have yet to arrive from japan! >_<

-jamie

we went to Lawry’s in beverly hills for Joel’s birthday and it was nice to see so many great friends showing up. joel sent out his little evite with like 3 days notice and took it upon himself to add my name to the title, “Jamie and Joel’s Birthday Dinner”. It was so not for me! Joel said he said no one would have showed up if he just put his name, but Sam let him know, more people would have if he removed my name, haha.

thanks to everyone that showed up, especially those that came from so far! Christian, Nuggie, Sam, Tommy, Nian, Chad, Nina, Sean, Erik, and his 2 friends (i suck i totally forgot their names). After dinner we went over to Jones on Santa Monica and Formosa, but it was soo fucking packed that you had ot stand in the aisles and do nothing. We got bored of that real fast and went across the street to Formosa Cafe.

I told myself to bring a camera and take pictures of people, but who am I kidding, I don’t even own a camera.

After the bar closed, we went to pick up our cars, and christian was too drunk to drive his jeep, so he turned it around to park it. He ended up running his tire onto the street gutter and the metal plating sliced his tire open and gave him a flat. That sucked ass.

Afterward we went to my house because Christian didn’t want to stop partying and sean was still wide awake. I have no idea how Sean does it, but he is always the last to go to sleep. In fact I don’t think I have ever seen him FALL asleep. Not only is the the last to go to sleep, he’s the type to NOT sleep over, jump in his car, and drive his ass all the way home. I think sean is a robot.

*does the robot*

Christian, Joel and I met up with Nina and Chad the next afternoon at Hugo’s on santa monica for some brunch. The waitress was ultra cute. We realized at this point in time, Christian is a calico human with multicolored hair.

After changing his tire, we drove down a traffic jammed Western and finally hit the freeway. We were 2 hours late for Joel’s birthday bbq at his moms house, but in the end it all turned out well.

Anyway, thanks everyone for showing up It was really good times.

last weekend we had a failed attempt at camping. christian wanted to put together a camping event at good ole’ san onofre. that night was just like oldschool back when david use to organize camping efforts and we’d head off to a random destination with no reservations or plans, just wood, food, fire, people, and blankets. i really miss those days.

turns out, during the summer the campgrounds are packed. the reservations need to be made at least 6 months in advance (or so we were told). we even tried bribing the little prick with over a hundred bucks to just let us in and he wouldn’t budge. in the end we gave up, 4 cars and 9 people in tow and headed back to Joel’s for an impromptu in house barbecue.

redemption!
christian has reservations via his dad for san elijo state beach park. we will be taking over the camp from sunday the 3rd until monday, july 4th!

there will be lots of food, booze, fun, fire, and good weather (we hope) so stop on by! if you cant get past the reservation fags just give me a call on my cell and we’ll get you in.