Spam Spread

VENTURA — Whatever thoughts Spam brings to mind, culinary delicacy isn’t usually one of them.

But don’t tell that to the 12 part-time cooks and connoisseurs of the pale pink loaf, who competed Sunday in the annual Best Spam Recipe Contest at the Ventura County Fair. And as any of the three judges will attest, the competition was, to say the least, stiff.

“I guess one of the good things about Spam is that it’s really easy to make into something,” said judge Angel Alamillo, a student at Oxnard College’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Management. “And they definitely came up with some good stuff.”

Contestants--who were judged in three categories: taste, appearance and originality--said they worked hard tweaking their recipes to achieve a dish with a tasteful panache.

Among the dishes that incorporated the famed cube of gelatinous pig parts were the Spam salad, Tropical Spam Delight--an hors d’oeuvre made with water chestnuts wrapped in thin shavings of boiled Spam and topped with pineapple wedges--Pacific Rim Spicy Spam Pasta, and crowd favorite the Popeye Cheezy Spam Boat made by Bill Nash of Santa Paula.

Nash, who admittedly sacrificed taste for presentation, said he tried to combine several ingredients that make his taste buds cringe--Spam not being one of them--to create his strange dish.

“I tried to think of three things that taste the worst and put them all together,” he said, adjusting his T-shirt emblazoned with the Spam logo. “It’s a fun little recipe and I’m told it’s surprisingly good.”

Keeping to a playful nautical theme, Nash sank his Spam in a pie pan filled with blue, berry-flavored Jell-O topped with spinach and ringed with a decorative lattice of creamy Cheez Whiz. From the middle of the Spam loaf was a note card skewered by a splinter of bamboo serving as a sail. Surrounding the pork-flavored boat were several saltines.

And although judges were initially skeptical about the culinary merits of the vacuum-packed meat that boasts a shelf life of more than a decade, they said their palates were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the recipes, especially of blue-ribbon winner Glenda Jackson’s Spam pot pie.

“It’s an old recipe that I originally used chicken in, but Spam is so versatile that it worked out beautifully,” the victorious Ventura resident said.

Jackson and her doughy, Spam-filled dish will now go head-to-head against other fair winners from around the country in a national contest later this year. If she wins, Jackson will get an all-expense-paid trip to Minnesota for a tour of Spam headquarters and a $2,500 shopping spree at the Mall of America.

Spam, which contains more than 90 grams of fat in a 12-ounce container and enough sodium nitrate to preserve a mastodon, has been a mainstay on grocery shelves for more than 50 years.

Spam, named for spiced pork and ham, was originally used to keep the bellies of American GIs full during World War II, but was later used as rations for the starving people of Britain and France.

Today, Spam-maker George Hormel & Co. produces more than 100 million pounds of the seasoned can of packed pork, where it is immensely popular in, of all places, the South Pacific.

“I’m a baby boomer so I was raised on Spam,” Jackson said. “And even though people have certain feelings about it, it’s actually pretty good.”