And yet another lucky foodie idea: eating fish on New Year’s Eve/Day. I’ve heard many different reasons why fish is supposed to be lucky — everything from that the scales look like coins (wealth), that they swim in schools (abundance) and that they swim forwards (moving ahead). New Englanders (and people in Scandinavia, Italy, Brazil, etc) are known to eat the (sacred) cod … more on cod some other time. Some people advocate that is it because of cod that the world is what it is today — bit of a stretch in my opinion, but whatever. In Germany, there is the tradition of Silvesterkarpfen (New Years Carp), but also herring (also a Polish tradition) is an option.
Me? Well, I don’t have any carp or herring, but I love smoked salmon, so here we have a quick appetizer of smoked salmon with dill mascapone, on homemade knekkebrod. The Knekkebrod is a cracker like bread (no fat or leavening) with sunflower, sesame and flax seeds. Yummy like this or even just with a schmear of cream cheese.
Ingredients
1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2/3 cup raw hulled sunflower seeds
1/3 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup flax seeds
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 cups cold water
Directions
Preheat oven to 325F.
In a large work bowl, combine flour, oats, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds and salt together. Add the water and stir until a thick, sticky dough forms. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let stand for 10 minutes.
Divide the cough into three equal pieces; flatten each into a rough disk. Place one piece on a piece of parchment paper that will fit a sheet pan (16 x 11 inches). Place another piece of parchment paper on top of the dough and roll the dough to a 1/16-inch thickness. The shape can be rough — no need to make it square or particularly round, and it can have rough edges. Slide the dough onto one of your sheet pans and peel of the top piece of parchment. sprinkle with additional sea salt, if you like. Repeat with the remaining dough. The recipe makes 3 sheet pans worth, so lots of crackers!
Bake the crackers, turning the pans half way through, until dry and light golden brown, about 45 minutes. Cool completely on the pans, resting on wire racks. Once cool, break crackers into whatever size and style you like.
