Spam-tastic recipes ham it up for charity recipe booklet
Hear ye, hear ye! The knights of the conference room table have spoken, and they’ve crowned a winner in our Spam Jam recipe contest.
All hail, Pedro Ramirez of Grand Prairie, who created an eye-popping Spam picadillo and rice stuffed pepper dish that wowed our judges and edged out several other terrific finalists. A teacher at KIPP prep school in Dallas, Ramirez says he has always loved to cook and has even competed in a few competitions. But he was especially intrigued by this one because he’d never cooked with the canned meat before. (Its primary ingredients are pork shoulder, ham and salt.)
Ramirez’s toasted yellow peppers were bursting with flavor from bacon, ancho chile peppers, chorizo, garlic, onions, crushed red pepper, chili powder, cinnamon and red-wine marinated Spam. A bed of flash-fried spinach surrounding the peppers, making the plate a feast for the eyes, too.
The Spam Jam recipe contest, co-sponsored by the Star-Telegram, Casa Mañana and Tarrant Area Food Bank, celebrates the run of Monty Python’s Spamalot at Casa, Saturday through June 12. Ramirez now advances to opening night,, where he’ll face off against several local chefs in the Ultimate Spam Jam Celebrity Cookoff. The crowd will get to sample the competitors’ dishes between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m., and vote for their favorites with a donated canned good. (Showtime 8 p.m.)
A 20-page Spam recipe booklet includes the contest recipe winners and runners-up, as well as those from the competing celebrity chefs — Keith Hicks of Buttons, Billy Woodrich of Billy’s Oak Acres BBQ, Manuel Vasquez of the Tarrant Area Food Bank Community Kitchen and Star-Telegram “Weekend Chef” Steve Wilson.
Readers, fans, followers and canned-meat lovers may purchase the books online at www.Star-Telegram.com/SPAMJAM for $10 (plus $1 service charge). The books are available for pick up and in-person purchase at the Star-Telegram’s downtown office front desk (808 Throckmorton Street).
Or, customers may have their books mailed for $14 (plus $1.75 service charge).
Proceeds benefit the Tarrant Area Food Bank. For tickets and information about the show, visit www.CasaManana.org.
Staff writer Wendy Stane contributed to this report.
Spam picadillo and rice stuffed peppers
Serves 2
- 3 ounces chopped Spam
- 1 cup red wine, plus more if needed
- 2 slices bacon
- 1 dried ancho chile pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 2-3 bell peppers (red, yellow or green)
- 1 Roma tomato
- 1/2 chopped onion
- 3 ounces chorizo
- 1/2 cup rice, uncooked
- 2 handfuls spinach
- Grated cheese of choice, for topping
1. Marinate the chopped Spam in red wine in refrigerator, ideally overnight. Reserve marinade.
2. Fry bacon strips in a pan till crisp. Save the bacon fat.
3. In a small saucepan, boil ancho pepper and spices in 3 cups of water.
4. Cook a cored red, yellow or orange bell pepper in a skillet until slightly toasted on exterior and edges.
5. Add tomato and onion to the bacon fat, along with chorizo. Cook until the onions are semi-translucent. Then remove all the ingredients from the pan.
6. Add the 1 cup of red wine from the Spam marinade to the pan and deglaze with a spatula (Add more if needed to deglaze pan.) Remove the ancho pepper from the boiling water. It should be soft. Add the boiling ancho pepper water to the wine. Add the chopped Spam and chorizo mixture to the pan.
7. In a separate pan, boil rice for 3-5 minutes. Then stir on medium to low heat. Add water if necessary.
8. Flash-fry 2 handfuls of spinach for about 1 minute. Set aside.
9. Stuff the peppers with rice, then Spam mixture and top with cheese of your choice. Heat broiler and place in oven to broil until cheese is crusty. Plate the pepper in the middle of the plate and spread flash-fried spinach around the stuffed pepper. Crumble bacon around top of pepper and spinach before serving.
Nutritional analysis per serving: 682 calories, 29 grams fat, 60 grams carbohydrates, 27 grams protein, 64 milligrams cholesterol, 1,323 milligrams sodium, 7 grams dietary fiber, 43 percent of calories from fat.
Pedro Ramirez, Grand Prairie
This story was originally published May 31, 2016 at 10:21 AM with the headline "Spam-tastic recipes ham it up for charity recipe booklet."