INhonolulu Magazine Issue #15 - March 2014 | Page 10

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in San Francisco or in general on the
mainland. It’s kind of hard to find it,”
says Lee as we talk over the phone
about her pioneering homemade
SPAM experiments.
“When I was thinking about what
would be my niche …I was just thinking what’s sold at food fairs in Hawai‘i, and it’s typical stuff: malasadas,
shave ice, musubi … but here it’s not
standard,” she says.
Recognizing that “people are kind
of grossed out by SPAM on the mainland,” Lee keyed in to the popularity
of the do-it-yourself, farm-to-table,
local/organic movement in San Francisco. “What they would be into is

There is a sort of paradox to
it. You are aiming to make
SPAM, but at the same time
fundamentally trying to not
make SPAM.
if I figured out how to make it,” she
says. Through a process of trial and
error, Lee and Davidson were able to
produce a SPAM-like luncheon meat
made with pork, chicken, and duck.
“I live in San Francisco and I eat a
lot of vegan and organic and local and
sustainable food now days… but I
still have a nostalgic place in my heart
for something like SPAM because I’ve
grown up with it,” Lee says.
SPAM action-plan
Despite the success of her pop-up,
Lee has stuck with her day-job. But
the recipe she and Davidson created inspired others on the Internet
and proved that homemade SPAM is
within the realm of the possible.
Emboldened with this knowledge,
I set off to make my own version of
SPAM here—in Honolulu—with the
help of two friends, Aiko Yamashiro and Bryan Kuwada. Aside from
being foodies, great company, and
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smart kids who feel that how we eat
should be a big part of any conversation about Hawai‘i’s future, these two
brought a crucial element to our endeavor: a meat grinder.
We opted to follow Kim’s version
of Pollack’s recipe, because it seemed
the least scary. Kim writes longingly
on her blog about growing up eating
SPAM, rice, and kimchi, so we knew
she knew what she was looking for in
a recipe.

We used:
2 lbs Shinsato Farms Pork Shoulder (frozen) from Kokua Market $8.99/lb
8 oz Applegate Farms Uncured Ham
(family pack size) $8.99
¼ cup potato starch
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbs sea salt
1 tbs sugar
(Note on ingredients: We aimed to cut
out sodium nitrite from the “six simple ingredients” that make up classic

SPAM. However, in retrospect some
might have snuck in via the celery
powder used in Applegate Farms ham.
Live and learn.)
That’s it! The procedure involves
grinding, mincing, and mixing all the
ingredients together; packing it all
into a meatloaf pan; baking for three
hours at 300 degrees in a water bath
(like the kind used to poach pâté);

and finally draining the fat and pressing the loaf overnight in the refrigerator with some kind of weight. Check
out Kim’s recipe for more details.
Aside from a few meat grinder
mishaps this was an easy procedure
to pull off with three people working together. As a project it took up
most of the weekend, from locating
ingredients Saturday morning to Sunday-morning breakfast and musubi-making. Most of it was wait time,
which we used to do things like eat
gelato, take naps, and talk about our
favorite ways to eat SPAM. We went
to bed Saturday night with visions of
spiced hams dancing in our heads.
De-processing SPAM

We knew we’d hit success when we
popped our loaf out of the pan and
saw that weird yet familiar gel congealed on the edges.
The verdict: yum. Our demystified mystery meat tasted remarkably
SPAM-y—even better I would argue,
as it was fresher and more flavorful.
(The crispy fried parts from the edges were amazing.) But the texture fell
short of real SPAM. Though slices held
together while cold, they tended to
crumble and stick in the frying pan.
We had a long discussion ( ݙ\