This book belongs on the shelf beside 50 Great Chicken Recipes and Edible Flowers. Single-ingredient books are wonderful.You have surely seen the current TV ads for the popular new cookbook called What Hawai‘i Likes to Eat by Muriel Miura. If you’ve been cooking and eating in the islands for long, you must have at least one other cookbook by Miura in your home. You may even remember her from her 1970’s television shows. Somehow, none of that will prepare you for Miura’s Hawai‘i Cooks with Spam®.
Don’t take this wrong, but Ha-wai‘i Cooks with Spam® has the look and feel of one of those cookbooks you’d normally get for so many proofs of purchase or bottle caps from, say, Campbell’s Soup or Knox Gelatin. There are pages and pages of cheerleading for the canned pork product, including the history of the “pre-cooked luncheon meat” and a list of the most important Spam® festivals around the U.S. However, when you get past the glossy pictures of cans of Spam®, and open the book in the kitchen, you’ll find the old familiar Miura flair for innovative, international cookery.
Hoopla aside, let’s talk about cooking: A slightly spooky picture of a whole Spam® (posing as a ham), pierced with whole cloves and shiny with glaze used to be on the label of the Spam® can. The recipe for that “classic” is in the introductory pages. Here’s a shock: It’s actually good, although I concluded that the recommended 20-minute baking time is too little. Instead of 20 minutes at 375, I suggest, start with the oven at 500 degrees. After five minutes, turn the temperature down to 375, and continue baking for 25 minutes.
The other classic Spam® presentation in Hawai‘i is, of course, Spam® musubi. If you need a recipe for that, it’s here along with a kicked-up, teriyaki and furikake version. Some of the other Spam® stuff here is Spam® teriyaki, broiled Spam®, Spam® omelet, fried Spam®, Spam® saimin salad—and that just part of what is on only 5 pages of recipes.
Besides more than 100 recipes, Miura has scattered very simple, straightforward cooking tips throughout this book—some Spam®-specific others completely general—all sound and useful.
Back to the recipes: Get this, there are sections of Spam® recipes representing the cuisines of America, China, Philippines, France, Hawai‘i, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Portugal and Southeast Asia, in addition to the recipes from the “Island Favorites” category mentioned above. All of the Asian cuisines tend to support Spam® recipes that seem completely serious. The European ones, maybe not so much. Not to say that Spam® marinara sauce wouldn’t be good, but I won’t be trying that one or the Spam® lasagna. Using Spam® in a quiche that might otherwise have had ham is a believable substitution, and all three French recipes are basically that.
I’ll leave you to do the rest of the exploring yourself. To do that, you’re going to need to own your own copy of Hawai‘i Cooks with Spam®. Whether you’re looking for kitchen jokes or trying to save money, supporting your kids’ taste for Spam® or just enjoying a little culinary frivolity, you’re going to like this book more than you think you will.
4 out of 5 Shakas
Hawai‘i Cooks with Spam®
By Muriel Miura
Mutual Publishing, Honolulu, 2008
Spiral bound, 126 pages
$14.95