Rollin 'weed

Perhaps Spam is just slightly unconventional...

Seaweed, to be precise. For lunch today, I decided that I wanted kimbap, which is a Korean lunch-y food that somewhat resembles Japanese sushi rolls. I say somewhat resembles because kimbap has more veggies and no raw fish. In Korean, "kim" means seaweed and "bap" means rice, so the direct translation of the word is seaweed-rice. While this is not the most creative name, it is an apt description.

Whenever I come across a non-Asian person who has never come into contact with seaweed, he or she makes a strange face at the thought of eating it. No, seaweed is not that rubbery slippery stuff at the beach that always washes onto shore and is infested with thousands of flies--that would be kelp. It's a delicious, crispy, salty, pleasurable sheet of green goodness that is cut up in roughly 2x3-inch rectangles, eaten as a pseudo side dish, and enhances pretty much any meal. At least the Korean kind is. There's also sushi seaweed, which is sturdier, more flexible, and unseasoned, and it's used for, well, sushi. It's also used for kimbap, actually.

Kimbap is such a good packed food, and I have many fond memories of it from childhood. My parents and I would go to the Korean market and pick up a couple packages for our nighttime picnics at the Hollywood bowl, ready to face the open air and enjoy an outdoor classical music concert, concluding with brilliant fireworks. Let's ignore the fact that I ate all my kimbap in the first half hour and then proceeded to fall asleep, missing everything that happened. Anyway, those packages of two rolls, tightly saran-wrapped into a styrofoam tray, accompanied by three bright-yellow semicircles of pickled radish, were a sight to behold.

Nostalgic and hungry, I felt like reproducing them. This turned out to be way more work than I expected. Who knew that so much went into such seemingly simple things? They weren't particularly difficult to make, but there were many steps involved. Usually they're made with beef, but due to my immediate lack of beef, I decided to go with my favorite canned alternative: Spam. I know many people are grossed out by canned mystery meat, but I love it. I have no truly persuasive argument in favor of it, and even I am puzzled when I read the first item on the ingredient list, "pork with ham." However, if my taste buds like it, which they do, I will eat it. There are many items that I will step down from my pedestal of healthiness and food-snobbery for, and Spam is one of them. The rest of my ingredients were spinach, carrots, eggs, and pickled radish (also known as danmooji). All of the ingredients, minus the spinach, had to be sliced into skinny, long strips so that they could be rolled up.

I am always amazed by how dirty spinach is. I actually pulled off chunks of dirt and mud from my spinach leaves before soaking them in water, to remove more dirt, and then washing them liberally, to remove even more dirt. When it comes to spinach, I'm not worried so much about the dirtiness as about the gritty texture that dirt creates. I am very picky about texture. Cleanliness? That's a very different story.

Soaking spinach as I julienne carrots

I blanched the spinach in boiling water for about a minute and then ran it under cold water for a bit to cool it. "A bit" is clearly not long enough because the spinach was still quite hot enough to feel hot when I tried to grab it. I let it run under the water for some more time. As I let it drain, I cooked the eggs and then cut them, and then I grilled my already-cut Spam. Because I'm lazy, I bought the radish precut. Assembly time!

Assembled and ready to go

The seaweed goes down on the bamboo sushi roller--yes, this is a necessary piece of equipment--and then the rice goes on the seaweed. Spreading the rice on the seaweed can be tricky. If you're not careful, you can rip a hole in your seaweed. Using a nonstick rice paddle really helps, but the next best thing is a wet spoon or spatula or something. I actually didn't have sushi seaweed, so I ended up using the flaky Korean kind, which is delicious, but rather fragile. I managed, amazingly, to not tear a gaping hole this time.

I have a tendency to massively overstuff my kimbap. I had to make an effort not to. In my opinion, more is generally better, but in the case of kimbap, more means a roll that doesn't close and then falls apart while you attempt to slice it. Even without jamming way too much stuff in there, the rolling process was still kind of tough because of the lack of sushi seaweed. As a result, my kimbap was slightly loose because I couldn't apply as much squeezing force while rolling, for fear of destroying the base. I know what to put on my grocery list for next time.

My kimbap came out slightly ghetto-looking, but not as bad as it could have been. I had plenty of leftover ingredients, so those went into the fridge, and I'll have another try at making a prettier roll for my lunch tomorrow. Luckily, since the ingredients are prepared, tomorrow's lunch-making process will be much quicker. I'm gonna have to adjust something though because today's kimbap was rather bland. I think there needs to be some sesame oil somewhere, and possibly something else. Regardless, it was still good enough to hit the spot, and now I am sufficiently reminded of falling asleep amongst hundreds of people as an orchestra's instruments lull me to sleep.

Rolled and sliced