Friday, April 22, 2016

Spam

Today

There are often postings on Facebook showing pictures of objects or activities designed to generate collective nostalgic "aahs" from readers of a certain age. 

Today the object pictured was slices of Spam being fried in a pan. "Fried Spam, yay or nay?" was the comment.

In My Day

As a child we ate "luncheon meat", or that was how my mother described it, although it was probably Shoulder Pork and hAM. It was a homogeneous  cuboid lump that was sold in tins that had to be opened with a key. The keys often broke, leaving you trying to fork this lump onto the plate, at grave danger to your fingers on the jagged edges. One on the plate, this lump was sliced evenly and served with lettuce, cucumber and salad cream.

Shortly after I met Paul he went to the Police Training College at Sandgate. He bemoaned the fact that he was putting on weight and partly blamed the spam fritters which featured regularly (I don't suppose that the many pints of beer consumed had much to do with it). I had never heard of this culinary horror, but then noticed it on the menu at my college and tried some. Eeew! was it possible to have a greasier meal?

I later experimented with frying slices of Spam and found that it was one of those items which contained so much fat that you didn't need to put any in the pan; it just oozed its own fat. But dint of much sizzling over a high heat it was possible to get a little crispiness to the edges. Once you'd discarded the excess fat, it arguably tasted  better than straight from the tin. Coating it in batter and then deep frying would have sealed in all that lovely piggy grease as well as adding the layer from the deep-frying. Yummy.

So my answer is "nay" and gives me another reason for being glad I'm a vegetarian.

2 comments:

Rose said...

Interesting blog:))
I remember luncheon meat too. It taste better as well!

Julia said...

Thanks, Rose! Please feel free to share this blog