The Greek Food » Traditional » Dakos : The famous Cretan starter

I was wondering once how many times I had started my articles in this blog with the phrase “…I was bored, so I decided to cook something…”. To be honest I didn’t looked on all of my articles but it must have been too many times.

After all I think most of the times I start to cook something for me and my brother when I am really bored and want to create something. Maybe it’s a way for curing depression…creating nice plates but , if you create something bad, it will bring the opposite results.  Nevertheless making the following recipe isn’t something you can do really fail and not make it.  It’s pretty easy and one of the most traditional plates you can have in Greece and especially Crete. The famous Cretan Dakos.

Dakos is a nice recipe that you can use for a salad or a share plate when you have a lot of friends.

Due to its ingredients it fills you up easily and its really fresh and ideal for hot days. Looking up on the internet I found out that its really healthy also! Oh yes, doctor Chef will explain you.

So according to a site I read (and after years of experience as a doctor…hmm..) , the cheese has calcium for our body, the rusk (in greek: paximadi/παξιμάδι)  is rich in fibre, olive oil is antioxidant and the tomato helps in preventing the cancer. Well, if one of those is correct…its fine by me!

Apart from that, the Cretan diet is really famous for being nutritionally sufficient and having beneficial effect to health. Do a small research if you don’t believe me… you will see J

INGREDIENTS FOR DAKOS

• 4 large round barley rusks
• 3 large mature tomatoes (pilled and mashed)
• 8 table spoons extra virgin olive oil
• 150 g feta cheese
• 50g myzithra or ricotta cheese
• 10-15 black olives
• 1-2 table spoons capers
• oregano
• salt and freshly ground pepper

METHOD

1. Moisten the rusks , with 4 tbsps of water each, and drizzle with the olive oil.
2. Use a grater to grate the tomatoes, into a colander and leave for 5 minutes to drain.
3. Crumble the feta cheese with a fork, or grate it with a grater.
4. To put the dish together, spread the grated tomato on the rusks and add the crumbled cheese. Top with the olive oil and capers. Sprinkle with the oregano and drizzle with some extra olive oil.

p.s. to be honest, sometimes it’s really hard to find the proper rusks where I leave in London so I just use brown bread sometimes. It’s healthy and tasty…and it gives a similar feeling…well..you dont have the crunchy taste of the rusk…but what can you do….we said before…sometimes you need to improvise.