The Seven Sacred Pools at the Kipahulu end of the glorious Haleakala was our last stop on our long Road to Hana.   After a quick dip in the cool, crisp water — a much needed relief from the heat of that July afternoon — we turned around and drove back to Paia, where our journey began.  We discovered a roadside cafe humbly set in a local’s front yard and treated ourselves to plate lunches of barbecued chicken, rice, and macaroni salad.  The chicken was cloyingly sweet but the meal was satisfying, nonetheless.  For some strange reason, it felt very much like home. Maybe it was the Filipino family who prepared our meal or the long-haired mutt who cheerfully greeted everyone with a big, wet smile.

Mile marker after mile marker, we retraced our journey along Maui’s most celebrated road.  The jagged jet-black beaches of Waianapanapa at Mile 32.  The fruit stands brimming with papayas and pineapples in Nahiku at Mile 25.  The nearly vertical Waikani Falls in Wailua at Mile 19. The checkerboard taro fields in Keanae at Mile 17.  The Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon-esque bamboo forest at Mile 7.  The daring windsurfers in Hookipa Beach at Mile 9.

Then we were back at where we started, at the Minit Stop, the convenience store next to our bed and breakfast. Minit Stop has the best Spam musubis in town — fried Spam on a bed of rice held together with nori.  At first, it bothered me that they spelled Minute, Minit (or maybe I just didn’t get it?)  But it all seemed forgivable after I saw the trays of Spam musubi and fried chicken inside their humble store.  Who knew you can get soda, sunblock and Saran-wrapped Spam musubi all in one place? Only in Hawaii, I guess.

Cold fried chicken with rice, Spam musubi, a bottle of water, and a bar of Twix — all wrapped in a brown paper bag.  It was the perfect Hawaiian picnic lunch for the perfect Hawaiian road trip.  It couldn’t get better than that.

I had my first taste of the Hawaiian staple not too long ago but I am no stranger to Spam, having grown up with this comfort food in a can on our dinner table.  My mom would make fried garlic rice and fried eggs for Spam-silog breakfasts and would fix Spam pan de sal sandwiches for merienda.

Last weekend, while Dennis and I planned another trip to Hawaii, this time to the Big Island, I made Spam musubi for lunch.  I sprinkled nori komi furikake on the rice before I laid the slice of fried salty-goodness on top to give it a delightful sweet-savory crunch.  Every bite took us back to our incredible road trip in Maui and made us look forward to the volcanoes in the Big Island even more.

Making Spam Musubi

Spam musubi mold or an empty can of Spam with both ends cut open

4 to 6 cups cooked short-grain rice, preferably Nishiki
1 can Spam, sliced into eight 1/4-inch thick slices
8 sheets nori, preferably the size used for temaki sushi
nori komi furikake

Fry Spam slices over medium heat until golden brown, one to two minutes each side. Lay the fried slices on paper towels until the musubis are ready to be assembled.

Fill the Spam musubi mold to the brim with freshly steamed rice. Press down the rice and sprinkle the top with nori komi furikake. Carefully remove the musubi mold and then lay a slice of fried Spam on the bed of rice. Trim the nori sheets into roughly 2-inch by 7-inch rectangles. Wrap the musubi with nori.  If the rice is warm enough, the nori sticks beautifully to the rice. Otherwise, moisten the ends of the nori with water to seal.

Cooking Notes:

1. A cup uncooked rice is roughly equivalent to two to three cups cooked rice.

2. Buy nori sheets that are used in making temaki or cone sushi. These have the right length, roughly 7-inches. Trim the width to around 2 to 2-1/2 inches.

3. Spam musubi molds are available in most Japanese grocery stores like the Nijiya Market in Japantown in San Francisco. An empty can of Spam with both ends cut open can also be used in place of a musubi mold. Just be careful since the edges may be sharp.  Use a fork to press down the cooked rice.

4. Homemade nori komi furikake can be made by mixing toasted sesame seeds, salt, sugar and nori cut into tiny pieces.

The following day I bought myself a copy of Ad Hoc At Home and then assembled the ingredients for my very first homemade Ad Hoc fried chicken.

Buying and Brining the Bird

The recipe calls for 2-1/2 to 3 pound chickens. As Keller suggests, cooking smaller chickens, typically found in farmers’ markets and smaller grocery stores, gives the optimum meat-to-crust proportion, which is critical to excellent fried chicken.

Cut the whole chicken into 10 pieces: 2 legs, 2 thighs, 4 breast quarters, and 2 wings. Keller is a huge advocate of buying whole chickens.  It’s a way to become more intimate with the act of cooking, he says and I agree.  For those who have not attempted  to cut a whole chicken before, let me forewarn you: it is not easy.  But I guess like anything else, practice makes perfect.  For the faint of heart, you can always buy a whole chicken and have it butchered before taking it home.

For the Chicken Brine

5 lemons, halved
24 bay leaves
1 bunch (4 ounces) flat-leaf parsley
1 bunch (1 ounce) thyme
1/2 cup honey
1 head garlic, halved through the equator
1/4 cup black peppercorns
1 cups (10 ounces) kosher salt
2 gallons water

Combine all the ingredients in a large pot, cover, and bring to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring to dissolve the salt. Remove from the heat and cool completely, then chill before using. The brine can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

The recipe makes two gallons of brine that is good for 10 pounds of chicken (3 to 4 whole chickens), which may be a bit much for a single person, a couple or a small family.  I recommend either brining a big batch and freezing the brined chicken that you won’t use or simply dividing the recipe accordingly depending on how much chicken you are going to cook.  I made fried chicken using a single 3-pound chicken and ended up using 1/3 of the amount of each ingredient and it worked fine.  The important thing to remember is to keep the proportions intact.

Pour the brine into a container  large enough to hold the chicken pieces, add the chicken, and refrigerate for 12 hours.  The chicken may be too salty if you brine the chicken for more than 12 hours.

Remove the chicken from the brine, rinse with cold water, pat dry with paper towels and let it rest at room temperature for over an hour.

Dredging and Frying the Bird

Keller recommends peanut oil for deep frying, which I found to be rather elusive when I was shopping for groceries.  I ended up using canola oil, which he, likewise, recommends.  Fill the pot with at least 2 inches deep of oil and heat to 320 degrees F.  If you have the luxury of two large pots and a lot of oil, you can cook the dark meat in one pot and white meat in another pot.  Otherwise, cook the dark meat first, then turn up the heat and cook the white meat.  Note that the oil should not come more than 1/3 of the way up the sides of the pot.

For Dredging and Frying

1 quart buttermilk
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
peanut or canola oil

For the Coating

6 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup garlic powder
1/4 cup onion powder
1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp paprika
1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp cayenne
1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl. Again the coating recipe is good for a large batch. For frying just a single 3-pound chicken, I found that using 1/3 of the amount of each ingredient is more than sufficient. Do not be too consumed about measuring the right amount of spices. Feel free to experiment and use the recipe just as a guide.

Transfer half the coating to a second large bowl. Pour the buttermilk on a third bowl and season with salt and pepper. Set up a dipping station: the chicken pieces, one bowl of coating, the bowl of buttermilk, and the second bowl of coating.

Start with the chicken thighs.  Just before frying, dip the chicken thighs into the first bowl of coating, turning to coat and patting off the excess.  Dip them into the buttermilk, then dip into the second bowl of coating.  Carefully lower the thighs into the hot oil.  Adjust the heat as necessary to keep the temperature of the oil at 320 degrees F.  Turn the chicken pieces carefully around in the oil and monitor the temperature.  Fry until the chicken is deep golden brown in color, cooked through and very crispy.  The recipe recommends 11 to 12 minutes of frying but, seriously, one important thing I realized is that if you follow the recipe (or any recipe for that matter) to the dot and you get too consumed about details you end up burning the chicken!  Frying for 11 to 12 minutes is not set in stone.  The deep golden brown color, I think, is a better gauge of completeness.

Keller recommends skimmers and spiders instead of tongs when handling the chicken pieces.  Lifting food from below, rather than pinching onto it, allows you to work the food gently.

Transfer the fried thighs to a cooling rack skin-side-up to allow excess fat to drain.  Make sure that the oil is at 320 degrees F.  Coat and fry the chicken drumsticks.  Turn up the heat and set the oil temperature to 340 degrees F.  Coat and fry the chicken breast and wings.  Make sure to carefully lower the chicken pieces into the hot oil and fry until golden brown and cooked through.

Arrange the chicken on a serving platter.  Add rosemary and thyme sprigs to the oil, which will still be hot and you’ll know what I mean when you drop the herb sprigs in the hot oil.  Let them cook and crisp for a few seconds and use them to garnish your chicken.

A final Keller note is that they let the chicken rest for 7 to 10 minutes after it comes out of the fryer.  If the chicken has rested longer than 10 minutes, keep the chicken in a 400 degree F oven for a minute or two to ensure that the skin is crisp and the chicken is hot.

Ad Hoc offers a topnotch 4 course family style menu that changes everyday using the freshest, local and seasonal ingredients.  The wine list is accessible and outstanding.  The staff is accommodating and friendly.  The dining room is casual yet elegant: hardwood floors with tables lined with a metallic top that beautifully reflects the light toward the ceiling.  Our dining experience truly reminded us of the warmth of dining at home.

Our fried chicken night started with a salad of baby mixed greens: living watercress, shaved brussels sprouts, 
red radish, nantes carrots, polenta croutons
 and sweet fennel vinaigrette.  The greens with a light drizzle of the sweet fennel vinaigrette was refreshing but the real star of this dish is the polenta croutons, which is simply fried polenta, a delightful discovery.

The chicken was served family-style with roasted cauliflower and carolina gold rice, hot smoked pork and 
cranberry beans.  The roasted cauliflowers came with 
capers, golden raisins, and pine nuts.  The dish was so simple yet so delicious.  And the rice, pork and beans dish was amazing as well.

The cheese course was Pedrozo Dairy Northern Gold
 with sweet butternut quickbread.  And a trio of cupcakes, devil’s food, lemon curd, red velvet nicely capped off the evening.

Ad Hoc is an hour and a half away from the city but saying that it’s well worth the drive is seriously an understatement.  I highly recommend the place to both locals and visitors alike.  Fried chicken night is every other Monday night.  You can check out Ad Hoc’s daily menu at their site to find out what’s for dinner.

After a hike from the Dogpatch to Dolores and back, we made a pit stop at Mission Burger for lunch today.  I was thrilled.  Dennis got their burger and fries and I, on the other hand, feasted on their new offering: the fried chicken sandwich.

Harrison free-range chicken with crispy chicken skin, pickled jalapeño, cucumber, shredded lettuce and secret sauce on an Acme roll.  The sweet and hot pickled jalapeños complemented the crispy and salty fried chicken very well.  And the crispy chicken skin was a wonderful bonus.  It was a bit messy but all great fried chicken sandwiches are messy anyway!

Just a few notes about Mission Burger.  Should you order fries? Absolutely.  If you’re not a lemonade person, such as myself, grab a drink at Duc Loi since they only serve mint lemonade and nothing else, not even water.  The dining area is a little snug and you may end up enjoying lunch on a milk crate but, seriously, who cares?  And their sandwiches are only $8, it’s an amazing deal.  They’re even donating $1 from every sandwich to the San Francisco Food Bank.  And a final word, they’re open everyday except Thursday.