SPAM Box - Part 2 (or, The Glory. The Shame.)

So, regional heat won.  Tickets to London received.  Time to go to the capital!

If you've been to Sheffield recently and arrived by train you might notice that there is a pub called The Sheffield Tap attached.  An ideal place to have a cheeky drink before your train is due to depart and that is exactly what I did. In fact, for some reason I even took a picture of my first beer.  Here it is;

Some beer.

Starting on the beer before having left Sheffield was possibly an error, as it set the tone for the rest of the evening and the following day - a day when I should have been concentrating on how I was going to make a TV chef and several people from SPAM believe that the SPAM Box was a genuine 'recipe'.

The train journey flew by, helped not just by the company of my old friend Rik, but by the new friends we forced into conversation on the way down.  One chap was revising hard, something to do with childcare reforms and other things Rik and I knew nothing about, but nodded along with feigned interest.  I think he had one of our beers, to help him relax during his revision.  There may have been a Chinese guy too.

We reach London.  We find the hotel.  We dump our belongings and head off for a drink (no surprise there!).  Drinks were found, drinks were drunk. We were drunk. Chicken. Hotel. Sleep.

The following morning, the morning of the cook-off, we set out to find a hearty breakfast/lunch but somehow managed not to.  We couldn't find proper food anywhere and resigning ourselves to hunger we headed to - you guessed it - the pub! I was genuinely nervous about the cook-off and since we had time to kill before being picked up it seemed sensible to calm the nerves with a pint.  Now, I'm not sure how long we were in the pub but I do recall a man with ladders and a fella who joined us at our table seemingly uninvited.  We talked about life, women, was, love and for some reason, rugby.  He seemed alright so we bought him a drink, then he went to a cash machine so he could afford to buy us a drink. We must have got stuck in an overly polite round buying system because I was drunk by the time the car collected us.

This is the nice chap who bought us drinks. Look, we're all holding hands. 

Car arrives. We climb in. We act sober.

We reach SPAM HQ (I have no idea what building it was).  Rik's first question is 'Is there somewhere cold I can put my beers'.  I don't think he was actually given an answer so he used his initiative and put the 12 pack of beer in one of the kitchen fridges. Genius!

Post speech photos. Phil doesn't hate me. Yet.

There's a SPAM quiz, a speech by Phil Vickery and then we're split into groups to stagger the cooking/judging.  I was in the third and last group.  This mean that I had extra time, whilst groups 1 and 2 were cooking, to involve myself in the complimentary wine.  What I SHOULD have done was taken advantage of the food they'd prepared for us.  Instead I took it upon myself to ensure everyone's glass was topped up.

Groups 1 and 2 finish their cooking and it's time for me to step up.  The nerves had gone, of that there was no doubt, and now it was time to try and carve a neat, vertical shaft into a block of luncheon meat with a chefs knife, cook it and present it for judgement.

Spot the glass of wine anyone? Shameful.

I must have been immensely lucky with the actual preparation of the SPAM Box because it all seemed to go as planned.  I'd even made a reduction of Henderson's Relish to make chefy swirls on the plate.  I don't think the judges even knew what Henderson's Relish was so it was a bit of a waste.

The one thing that stands out to me about the cooking side of things is Phil interrupting me, resting his elbows on my workstation and conspiratorially asking 'Is this a piss-take?'.  Had I been less than several pints and a handful of glasses of wine in, I may have confessed that yes, this is a joke, but it's all good clean fun and I do genuinely enjoy SPAM from time to time.  What I actually did was make myself look like an idiot by trying to convince him that I was serious and was convinced I could win.

Black pudding, mushroom, grilled tomatoes, chefy swirls and the SPAM Box.

From the point of cooking my dish to going for the train home is almost a complete mystery to me.  Were it not for the fact that I took my camera with me I wouldn't be able to confidently tell you anything from this point on.  I know there was more alcohol.  There were a few group hugs followed by a hurried walk to the station, only to find that we'd missed the train because we stopped for a curry and to make some more friends.

Lovely people who will avoid me forever

Mystery bottle of booze

Top bloke.  The fact that he can even smile for this picture is a testament to how much of a gentleman he is.

SPAM loving.  We'd got snap happy by this stage.

Italian friends!!

Free curry!

We were ordered out of the restaurant before we'd finished eating because someone, for some reason, thought it'd be funny to throw his cutlery at me.  I can only assume the reason for it missing me was the fact that Rik probably couldn't see anything, and so the cutlery clattered across the restaurant floor rather than lodging in my eye socket.  Loud, drunk, cutlery throwing idiots aren't welcome in the fine Indian eateries of our wonderful capital and we were ejected.  Quite right too.

Outside the restaurant we realised that we'd left ALL of our stuff behind.  Our bags with our clothes and beer were left with the SPAM folk.  All I had with me was a tote-bag of SPAM goodies (spatula, certificate, candle. I was still wearing the apron.) and my camera.

We missed our train and ended up on one that terminated in Derby.  Close enough.  After about an hour of walking back and forth through the station we tried to talk our way into a hotel room for free.  Two drunk men asking for a hotel room 'just for a few hours' must have seemed a little unusual and we were politely turned away.

Our salvation came in the form of Rik's sister who very kindly drove from Sheffield to pick us up.  An angel.  I loved her more than I loved that free curry.  We were saved.  We made it home.

One of us went to work the following day. It wasn't me.

I found this blog post after the event that refers to me as being a 'beer-addled' student.  Close enough.

Food Stories blog featuring the SPAM competition