Bacon Musubi

After graduating I wanted to do something special, so I set forth to finally execute an idea I'd had for quite some time. This also ended up being the last real meal I cooked in California before moving to Switzerland (more about this in later posts).

Last year I went on a vacation to the island of Hawai'i (see here). While there, I noticed of course the famous Spam Musubi phenomenon, along with a range of other less famous musubi varieties (chicken, egg, and hot dog comes to mind). For the uninitiated, musubi is a lot like sushi, only without the fish - and the individual packs are usually larger than your ordinary nigiri.

Soon after returning from the vacation, it occurred to me what the logical next step would be, and I present to you:

Bacon Musubi - what spam musubi was always (?) meant to be!

Now, I believe this is an invention of my own, for one thing, the book mentioned here does not contain such a dish.

One of the reasons I hesitated before trying this out was that I didn't have experience making sushi either, so I wanted to wait till I had a good chunk of time to experiment.

Ingredients:
- nori
- apple smoked bacon
- sesame seeds
(rice)
- 1 cup black sticky rice
- 1 cup white sticky rice
- 4 cups water
- salt
(teriyaki)
- fresh ginger
- ¹/₂ cup soy sauce
- ¹/₄ cup vinegar
- ¹/₄ cup sugar

First the rice were boiled separately - this is important for the visual outcome, as black sticky rice contain plenty of color to also color the white rice if boiled together - each in 2 cups of salted water, for as long as needed (my black rice needed longer time than my white rice). When done, they were left uncovered to cool sufficiently to be workable with bare hands.

In a pan sesame seeds were toasted golden, and transferred to a bowl. Then the bacon was fried to a desired crispness and transferred to a plate. In the same pan, finely diced ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar was heated with constant stirring till the sugar was dissolved. Heating and stirring was continued for some minutes till the mixture thickened a little and then transferred to a bowl.Nori was cut into strips approximately 10 x 20 cm (4 x 8 inches), and on each was placed a ball of rice (formed by hand by mixing the boiled and semi-cooled black and white sticky rice), then a piece of bacon, teriyaki sauce (as made above). Finally toasted sesame seeds were sprinkled on top, and the nori was rolled to a closed band (wetting one end of the nori and then joining the 2 ends is usually sufficient to glue them together).
I was quite happy with the final result - but a dinner of only bacon musubi might be a little over the top, so I also made a few chicken musubi (otherwise same procedure).