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rice balls i ate in hawaii
On 10 May 2004 15:35:59 -0700, (burt) wrote:
>About 25 years ago, i was on a stopover in Hawaii for a couple days.
>This good looking surfer dude showed me around the island in his VW
>bug. We stopped at a roadside concession stand and had these tasty
>rice balls wrapped in saran wrap. They were kind of sweet tasting.
>Seem to remember someone saying it was something eaten for breakfast.
>Anybody know what these were and where I can find A recipe?
They're called "musubi", the most popular of which (in Hawaii, at least) is Spam
Musubi (often erroneously called "Spam Sushi"). They come in dozens of different
varieties, but the classic musubi is a ball of rice, sometimes molded into a
triangular shape, with a piece of pickled, preserved plum (umeboshi) stuffed
into the center of it, and then either rolled in a piece of nori, or sprinkled
with "furikake", which is the highly addictive seaweed and sesame-seed rice
seasoning. Other popular fillings are tunafish (sweetened with sugar and shoyu)
Some people use actual sushi rice (i.e. with sugar and rice vinegar) to make
musubi, but generally it's just plain rice. You mentioned that the rice balls
you had were sweet tasting, so you might have had a variation of musubi known as
"Inari Sushi" (better known as "cone sushi"), which is actual sushi rice,
stuffed into a pocket of fried bean curd ("aburage" ), and they are oh so sweet,
and oh so yummy.
In Hawaii, practically everyone eats rice at breakfast every day (as well as
lunch and dinner). They even serve a "portuguese sausage, eggs and rice"
breakfast platter at McDonalds (and every other fast food joint, for that
matter). 7-11 even sells musubi, so you can get your fix 24 hours a day 
I have fond memories as a little kid of my mom putting musubi for me in my lunch
sack, whenever my school went on a field trip.
just do a google search, and you can find a plethora of recipes. Just make sure
that the source is from a Hawaii or Japanese website/person, if you want the
real deal
Heres a good start, for spam musubi:
http://tinyurl.com/38f6d
Aloha,
mel
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