Dakos

I have to admit, when I first heard of dakos, how they’re distinctly Cretan and you MUST have them while in Greece, I was a little underwhelmed and kinda unimpressed. At first sight dakos look like they’d just be a Greek version of bruschetta, and I guess in theory they are if you think of the whole tomato on toast thing, but in reality, they are very different.

I think we had dakos at just about every meal we had in Crete, and when speaking to some locals it became very apparent that this is definitely something Cretans themselves do frequently eat. They also take a fair bit of pride in their particular method of making them too, which I can alway respect. And, if they’re being made at someone’s home they’re probably also topping it with their homemade olive oil grown from the trees on their property. Yes, Crete is a magical land.

Dakos appear to be bread with tomato, cheese and olives. And in practice that’s true but slightly more complex. The base of the whole thing is a barley rusk. It’s a thick slice of barley bread that’s been dried to preserve it, possibly for eternity. They are rock solid, like a hockey puck. So, what you do is either dip it in some water, or do what was recommended to me, and put them under some running water for a few seconds. It’ll soak into the bread, slightly rehydrate it and make it edible again. The rusks are then drowned in olive oil, a Cretan variety is clearly preferable here, and then topped with some grated tomato, super sharp myzithra (also spelled mizithra) cheese and some salty olives. It’s nutty, salty and refreshing, the perfect thing to eat on a dry, hot day in Crete, but I’ll settle for some on a grey, humid day in Philly.