Having fun with Two-Can Spam: “Vietnamese Style” Spam

No, not a certain avian purveyor of artificially flavored corn circles, but two cans of that mechanically processed pork product.

So why Spam for this post? A number of reasons. One, I felt it’s been a while since I posted on r/asianeats, and this is… vaguely Asian, since I think my family is one of the few that does it this way (and since we’re Vietnamese that automatically qualifies it as Asian right?) And secondly because it is “boring to great” week on r/52weeksofcooking, and Spam was listed right there as a boring food.

I’m not sure what h3ather meant when she said that spam was boring. Don’t get me wrong, I know spam has an extremely large and outspoken contingent of detractors, and there’s a lot of negative adjectives that can be applied to it, but boring would not be the first word I applied to it. Since I actually like Spam, I will not repeat those words here.

Oh yeah, before I forget, nobody in my household eats a can of spam over a kitchen sink. We have however eaten it with a pocketknife on one of the sandy shores at Yosemite, along with baguette. After a long day of hiking, eating it like that in the shade is just wonderful. But I digress.

So, Vietnamese style spam, what is that exactly? It’s actually two dishes actually that go well with rice. Here’s some of the stuff you’ll need for both. Two cans of spam (well, one will do really) cabbage, onion, a red chili, garlic. You will also need a big of fish sauce. And that automatically ups the “Vietnameseness” of any dish. Well, it could also up the Thai-ness, Phillipinesness or Cambodeliciousness of a dish as well.

But, I’m Vietnamese, so I’ll call this Vietnamese-style Spam. 

Japanese Mexican Fusion–Alpha Version of the Yakisoburrito!

A second day of posting in a row? Crazy? Maybe so, but I’m just trying to make up for lost time.

But on a more exciting note, today’s post is another Cast Iron Therapy Original! Well, an alpha version of one anyway, there are definite improvements that can be made.

Now, prepare yourself for some stream of consciousness style meandering narrative, or just skip to after the picture if that’s not your thing.

I wanted to make something regional initially, and a few ideas bounced around in my head as to what regional things were good in the area. Were I a lot further south in California, I could do a California Burrito, so there was that bouncing in my head.

At the same time, I wanted to try using some things from the farmer’s market as well, as that is pretty regional.

Going back to the idea of California however, there’s California Cuisine, which is “marked by an interest in fusion cuisine.” So, how about a fusion dish that uses local goods, and is partly inspired by the California Burrito. And… oh let’s fuse it with yakisoba while we’re at it.

In the end, this is regional from a very broad interpretation. It’s from the region of my brain.

I truly hope that I am not doing something horrific that the Japan and Mexico will hate me for doing in working on this recipe.

Ok, thanks for bearing with me in that really long introduction! Now for the recipe.

Week 8–Slow Cooking: ItaLatino Chicken Stew?

I again push the deadline on posting something for the 52 Weeks of Cooking challenge on Reddit. But by the time this posts, it should be before midnight in my time zone. Heck there is plenty of time before it is midnight in Hawaii. But enough apologizing, on to the soup.

I again am doing something mostly by the seat of my pants in this case. Looking for a few recipes gave me a good idea of what would work; unfortunately, I didn’t have all the ingredients to any particular recipe, so I just borrowed some ideas from a few recipes and went with it.

So why is it ItaLatino Chicken Stew? One because it sounds ridiculous, and I’m open to new names. Two because it uses “Italian style” crushed tomatoes and fajita seasoning. And Italian Fajita soup just sounds even more wrong. And there’s not really that many fajita ingredients in this dish. And while there’s a slightly chili like quality to the dish, I know people are really particular about what to call chili, and I don’t feel like offending anyone today.

There’s a whole lot of delicious though, and it was a pretty good way to slightly empty out the freezer and pantry, which is always appreciated in this household.