I have an obsession. I love buying cookbooks. And not just the easy-to-make weeknight recipe books but super hard and complicated cookbooks produced by amazing chefs that have some of the best restaurants in the nation (some of them ~ the world). When I buy these cookbooks I read through them with post-it notes flagging countless recipes I want to cook. But I rarely cook them. I’m not even a very good cook. I also have run out of space for them on my bookshelf. So before the cookbooks take over my house I think I should use them… cook with them.
So here’s my project: to cook every recipe in my fancy-smancy cookbooks. And to document them here, as I hope my blog obsession will force me to actually cook these recipes so that I can blog about them.
April 12, 2009
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Spam fried rice.
This recipe is from one of the best cookbooks I ever received. Before leaving for college both dad and my friend, Lindsey, were worried about me moving 5,000 miles away from home… for the specific reason that I did not know how to make any food that did not involve pressing start on a microwave.
Actually, that’s not true. I could make scrambled eggs because my sister (who was around 10 at the time - I was 16) had previously taught me.
My dad gave me cooking lessons, teaching me how to make lobster bisque, etc. Lindsey, who was a pretty awesome cook even back then (and now is one of Alan Wong’s top pastry chefs) made me a cookbook of things she felt was more in-line with my cooking level: recipes on pancakes, spaghetti, chicken salad sandwiches, etc.
This dish is one that probably everyone else growing up in Hawaii can do without a recipe, but I need recipes, so here it is.
First up, prep the meat. Cut up spam (using the fabulous spam cutter) and fry it up on the stove.
By the way - their fears were unfounded as BC had pretty wonderful (albeit fattening) cafeterias to provide me with nourishment until I finally learned how to turn on the stove.
