Summer Salad with Tasty Crackers

By Joy Johnson, Master Gardener

Bring the taste of the islands home to Dakota County with this simple, tasty, summer salad and fresh rosemary crackers. It uses a few ingredients that I have growing in my garden (onions, peppers, lettuce), or that are readily available at a farmer’s market or grocery store. The sour dough cracker recipe uses rosemary, which I have growing in a pot on the deck. I bring it in in the winter and it does well in the house too.

Easy Seafood Salad

Ingredients:

1 orange

1 lemon

1 lime

½ lb. peeled, deveined, cooked shrimp

½ lb. imitation crabmeat

2 T. chopped onion

2T. sweet red pepper

Lettuce

Crackers (see below for recipe for Rosemary Sour Dough Crackers)

1. Grate orange rind, save zest, cut it in half, squeeze out the juice and mix it with the zest.
2. Do the same thing to the lemon and the lime
3. Mix the shrimp, crabmeat, onion, and red pepper together
4. Pour the orange, lemon and lime juice and zest mixtures over
5. Serve on a bed of lettuce with crackers

Rosemary Sourdough crackers

Ingredients:

1 c. whole wheat flour

½ tsp salt

1 c.  sourdough starter

4T.  unsalted butter, room temperature

2 T. dried or fresh chopped rosemary leaves

Oil for brushing

Salt – for sprinkling on top

1. Mix flour, salt, starter, butter, and rosemary to make a smooth (not sticky) cohesive dough.
2. Divide in half, shape ach into a small rectangular slab. Cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate 30 minutes up to 2 hours until firm.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
4. Lightly sprinkle corn meal on a piece of parchment paper cut to the size of your baking sheet.
5. Use corn meal on your rolling pin and on the top of the dough to prevent sticking.
6. Roll one slab of dough to 1/16^th inch thick on the parchment paper. Transfer parchment paper to baking sheet, cut into squares with a pizza cutter, prick with a fork all over, brush with oil, sprinkle with salt.
7. Bake 20-25 minutes, rotate baking sheet halfway through.
8. Cool on a wire rack (I slide the parchment paper with the crackers on it over to the cooling rack after removing it from the oven.

If you don’t have sour dough starter, here is a recipe for crackers that doesn’t require sour dough starter. It’s from a Mennonite cookbook called, “More-with-Less”. Use the same rolling out technique in the photos for the sour dough crackers.

Wheat Crackers

Combine in a bowl:

3 c. white flour

1 c. whole wheat flour

1 t. backing powder

½ t. salt

Cut in:

¾ c. margarin or lard-margarin combination

Beat lightly:

1 egg

Pour egg into 1 c. measure. Add:

Enough mile to make 1 c. liquid

Mix to form a ball. Knead lightly about 20 strokes.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Divide dough into 4 parts, roll out thinly on floured board and place on greased cookie sheets. Cut with pie crimper or pizza cutter to desired cracker size. Prick dough all over. Sprinkle generously with salt. Bake 7-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Store in airtight container.

Options:

Sprinkle chopped fresh rosemary on top and roll into dough when rolling out.

Increase proportion of whole wheat flour to white.

Add ¼ c. wheat germ.

Sprinkle sesame seeds on top before rolling out.