Sardine Rillettes
Rillettes De Sardines or Sardine Spread are the indicated French and English titles heading the page long story just before the recipe in the David Lebovitz, My Paris Kitchen, Recipes and Stories Cookbook.
I admit to being a David Lebovitz fan along many avenues including as an engaging, humorous, and inspirational writer, and so although having ‘read the book’ My Paris Kitchen after having received it as a gift following its publishing, I hadn’t made note of today’s lovely appetizer.
In the accompanying story Lebovitz begins consuming more small fish due to their burst of vitamin D following a detailed physicians visit and having learned his deficiency thereof.
Luckily the preparation was designated among the ‘Cook the Book Fridays’ group last week titled Sardine Rillettes.
It was somewhat serendipity having read more than a few post entries among varying bloggers that caused me continued craving to prepare this appetizer but then had forgotten to pull the book off my shelf before leaving to the grocers.
I had to depend on story memories and a bit of instinct trying to remember the needed ingredients other than a few tablespoons of butter and a quarter cup of cup of cream cheese. The potentially bad news was that I only picked up one can of wild sardines. The good news since the recipe required 2 cans is that I luckily had three cans of sardines in the pull out cabinet shelf beneath the island in my kitchen. Yay. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?
I hadn’t remembered there were scallions in this dish, but it seemed a good match so I bought a bunch, turns out 2 whole minced scallions were indeed called for, it was sort of like hitting a home run.
I used the juice of half a lime which made up the called for one tablespoon, it happened to be a juicy lime. The recipe provides for using either lime or lemon and one can’t go wrong either way.
One tablespoon capers were rinsed, dried, and then chopped.
And though I remembered through reader’s entries that the David Lebovitz recipe for “Rillettes De Sardines” did not call for fresh herbs but rather the Dorie Greenspan recipe did, given that I love fresh herbs, and am trying to take advantage of the final days of green filled planted pots on the deck off my kitchen, I went with some thyme and parsley as well.
Having mashed up and combined all of the ingredients to its desired texture, since family were at assorted weekend visits in New York and otherwise, I half-filled four ramekins which suited perfectly for later individual snacking of the batch.
I could hardly wait to slather some onto the baguette which I had very thinly sliced.
Teresa McCarthy of One Wet Foot, a fellow blogger from the former Cottage Cooking Club, and member of Cook the Book Fridays has listed links to the other posts on Sardine Rillettes and if you would like to read on, or check out the other participating blogs, give a click here. If you are a food blogger and interested in Cook the Book Fridays they always welcome new participants.
Delicious. Sardine Rilletes.
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