Today’s creation for the Royal Selangor Jellyriffic Challenge is something near and dear to my heart: Spam musubi. Being from Hawaii, I grew up eating these all-in-one meals. We still do make Spam musubi here in Kuching, from time to time, breaking into our supply of Spam that my Mom thankfully brings each time she visits (Spam being substantially cheaper in Hawaii than anywhere else). But we haven’t done it lately, so this challenge is a good excuse to make some again!
Spam Musubi and Ume Musubi
Most musubi are trangle-shaped, like the ones sold at Mana Bu’s musubi shop in Honolulu. We don’t have a triangle-shaped musubi mold, but we do have the Royal Selangor Jelly Mould to shape the musubi! Putting the musubi together couldn’t have been easier.
We wanted to recreate a Vietnamese dish that we loved to eat back when we were living in San Jose: chả lụaor Vietnamese steamed pork roll. This tasty sausage is usually sliced thinly and served alongside favorites like bánh cuốn or inside banh mì sandwiches. It’s been a while since we had it, so we decided to try making it ourselves.
Waldorf salad is one of my favorite salads. I like its combination of sweet, savory and tangy flavors, and crisp and bursty textures. We took a winning Waldorf salad recipe and stood it up on its head.
Tall Waldorf Salad
When we were brainstorming ideas for the Royal Selangor Jellyriffic Challenge, Annie suggested making a Waldorf salad in jelly form. As she described it to me, at first I was skeptical. But the more the idea turned over in my head, the more I warmed up to it. Plus, I love puns: standing the Waldorf salad up turns it into a “Tall-dorf” salad 😛 ! So I agreed that we should do it.
Making this favorite Nyonya dish is easier with the Royal Selangor jelly moulds.
Today is the most time-pressed post yet. We started prepping for this dish at 8pm so please forgive us for the brevity as I am writing this under immense pressure to meet the Jellyriffic challenge midnight posting timeline. I think we’re pretty crazy to try something this ambitious so late especially when it’s our very first time making this as well.
But guess what? It took all of 1 hour to prep. Despite the number of ingredients, this dish actually comes together quite quickly especially if you have a blender at home or food processor to do all the hard work!
