Two months ago Murzik emailed me this recipe for sardine rillettes with the following comment: “made these a few times, total hit with everybody, especially served on some bread with a side of salad – perfect lunch! or makes pretty good little appetizers.” Even though I had no clue what the word rillettes meant, the recipe looked so appetizing that I bought a can of sardines, a pack of cream cheese and all other ingredients — but never got to mash them together.
Yesterday Murzik made them for lunch. The preparation took about 3 minutes, and I immediately regretted my procrastination. It was a love at first bite and an instant addition to my impress-in-5-minutes-or-less recipe list.
Snooping around Murzik & Husband’s kitchen (and its garage extension) in El Granada, always results in new inspirations and useful culinary discoveries. To demonstrate, here’s the first thing I saw upon arrival:
This is probably only about a quarter of their home-canned bounty and certainly puts my own feeble canning attempts to shame. These shelves deserve their own reality TV show: “Extreme Canning in El Granada” or “Serial Canners of Half Moon Bay” would be just a couple of possible titles…
I got to try the New Mexico pepper salsa (bottom row, third from the right) and it was ridiculously good!
Another ridiculously good thing was Husband’s borscht we had for lunch.
Misha's Borscht with beet tops and collard greens
I learned about Husband’s signature borscht spices: basil (to catalyze borscht’s covert tomato base) and coriander. So good. One day I need to steal the rest of his recipe.
And here are 5 more useful secrets I got out of their kitchen:
- Collard greens work great in borscht in place of cabbage
- Don’t throw out the green parts of leeks: use them instead of onions for a soup base or stock
- To preserve fragile fresh basil leaves, blend them with olive oil and freeze
- When freezing dill, there’s no need to chop it up — just freeze the entire washed and dried bunch in a ziploc bag. Frozen dill will beautifully crumble up on its own when you add it to dishes
- Fresh sage keeps very well in the freezer – I wish I knew this just a little earlier!
darling, what a write-up! thanks! glad you liked it all! you should try the canned tuna on your next visit.
I have tried your canned tuna before – unbelievable. I don’t know anyone else who cans their own tuna. Verily, I worship your husband as my canning guru.