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“What are you doing buying Spam?” Herself asks, a little wide-eyed as we unpack and sanitise the groceries following a trip to the shop.
“I’m gonna eat it,” I reply nonchalantly.
“You are?”
She knows, you see, that I have form when it comes to buying tins of non-perishable items that are habitually consigned to an unspecified purgatory in the cupboard.
“I AM gonna eat it. Tasty gear, is Spam.”
“If you say so. I suppose it’ll keep the tin of cured ox tongue company until you decided what to do with either of them.”
I picked up that particular non-perishable on a whim one day in M&S and it’s been looking at me from the shelf ever since.
“Don’t be so cheeky. Maybe one day I’ll make a bolognese and I’ll put the ox tongue in and not tell you.”
In all honesty, I’ve had that tin for about six months and still I haven’t the foggiest (or mistiest) idea of what I’m going to do with it. There’s always toast if I’m stuck. Toast works with everything. Gawd, but I love toast.
“Smoked oysters?!?” Herself notices another impulse buy.
“Yes, smoked oysters. I’m gonna eat those too. Don’t worry. Waste not, want not.”
“Could you not find any jellied moose when you were out?”
I somehow managed to bite back a few curses in French. I’d only have risked a skite anyway, seeing as she knows what I’m saying by now.
Swearing in French is good fun though. I thoroughly recommend it.
I have two abiding memories with Spam, I should say. I remember trick or treaters coming to the door one Halloween when I was in college and when I offered the skeleton and the ghost a tin of the good stuff (I had no Haribo in the house!), they refused. Imagine refusing a tin of Spam?! That would be like refusing a blessing from St Peter or declining a night out on the rip with the Wolf of Wall Street. It just doesn’t happen.
My other memory is of eating Spam toasties at my grandmother’s. Fried and crisped and loaded into Nutty Crust with a mud-slide of HP sauce, the bread was then fried in butter; it was devilishly decadent fare for a chilly Saturday afternoon. Those were the days, all right.
Possibly tarred with a bad rep because of the email junk of the same name, Spam in the right hands (and once in a blue moon) is a lovely treat. Ask South Korea. Over there Spam was introduced to the uninitiated during the Korean War and over the decades since has come to be regarded as a luxury food. Families and friends give hampers of the stuff to one another during the lunar thanksgiving holiday. Seriously.
“What are you going to do with the Spam anyway,” Herself wonders.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I know there’s a whole feed of recipes on the Spam website.”
It’s true. There’s Spam carbonara, Spam tacos, Spam chow mein… basically if you can think of a meat dish, some bright spark has done a variation with Spam as a substitute.
With research on my mind I spent half an hour that evening hoking through www.spam.com looking for inspiration. Out of all the Spam-able recipes, I was drawn to Asian Spam slaw with noodles and also, the Spam-bled eggs. Even the pulled Spam sandwich looked good. However, I then thought, if I’m going to get down and dirty with the Spam, I might as well get right down… to the bottom. To that end, I decided to revert to type, which is to say, do what granny used to do.
The top brass at Spam don’t miss any tricks either and there’s a recipe on the website for a ‘Two-step Spam Grilled Cheese,’ which is basically what I was after.
If you’ve a tin of Spam lurking at the back of your cupboard and your missus is giving you guff about it, dig it out and fire up this bad boy. That’ll show her – show everyone!
NOTE: If you can persuade your partner or weans or house-mates to give this a try, so much the better because it’s delicious. If not, you’re basically opening a whole tin of Spam for two slices, which probably isn’t the best plan. I mean, you could eat the whole tin yourself over a day or two but even this certified starvo would recommend such an action.
INGREDIENTS – TWO STEP SPAM GRILLED CHEESE
2 slices of the bread of your choice
2 slices of the cheese of your choice
2 slices of the choicest Spam, about a centimetre thick
soft butter or mayo
THE PLAN
Take your slices of the good stuff and place on a dry frying pan on a medium heat. Fry a little until crisping and then remove and set aside.
Butter the two slices of bread and lay these butter side down in the same pan. Add the cheese to the slices and cook until the cheese is beginning to melt and the bread toasted. Place your fried slices of Spam onto one of the slices and top with the other slice. Continue frying until the bread is completely crisped to your liking.
Remove, slice in half and devour without hesitation.
As they say in France (without swearing), Jacques le Pot!
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