Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Chopstick-collapsing Spam musubi

Hawaiian-Japanese canned pork fusion cuisine? You must be joking

2015: A Spam Odyssey

Perversely, it proved a lot more difficult to lay our hands on Spam than specialist sushi moulds and rice vinegar. Cue a virtual visit to another specialist emporium, which we reckon is the sole Spanish supplier of canned goodness to the entire US expat community.

Suffice it to say, after we'd paid the delivery charge, the words "value twin pack" no longer applied.

No matter, because suitably provisioned, we kicked off our Hawaiian adventure with the rice element, for which you will need ...

• 600g sushi rice
• 30g sugar
• 15g salt
• 80ml rice vinegar

This is a substantial amount of rice, but as we said, we were making some sushi as well. For the Spam mususbi alone, we could have got away with around 150g of rice.

On hand as glamorous assistants for this recipe were my daughter Katarina and her mate Martina McHugh. They'll appear in full in due course, but for the moment here are their hands presenting the traditional step-by-step:

If you can't get pukka sushi rice, then a bog-standard short-grained alternative can be used, we gather. The exact amount of water required varies with the type of rice. You'll need enough to be fully absorbed without the rice beginning to burn on the bottom of the pan. Apart from that slightly tricky factor, the rice prep is hardly arduous.