Dakos is a Greek food made of cheese, tomato, and rusks, often served as an appetizer or bread salad. Rusks are made with barley bread and moistened with water or tomato juice before being topped with grated tomato, cheese, and olive oil. The ingredients can also be combined in a bowl and served as a salad with non-traditional ingredients like cucumber and onion. The salad is left to sit for half an hour before being served.
Popular in Crete and often served as an appetizer, dakos is a Greek food made mainly of cheese, tomato and rusks, a kind of twice-baked bread similar to bruschetta. Traditionally, a dakos consists of a rusk of bread topped with tomatoes and cheese, and sometimes served with a side of olives. However, the ingredients can also be combined in a bowl and served as a bread salad.
Rusks are normally made with a barley bread and are simple to make at home. The bread is cut into slices. Then the slices are either simmered until crisp or brushed with oil and grilled. Even simple toasting of bread often works.
When making dakos, the rusks are first moistened with water or tomato juice. The tomatoes are then grated and can be strained to remove excess juice. Once grated, the tomato pieces are placed on the rusks. Sometimes sliced onions or green peppers are added on top of the tomato, but usually crumbled cheese is placed directly on top. Traditionally, mizithra cheese is used, but feta cheese is often used.
Extra virgin olive oil is generally used in the preparation of dakos. Depending on the recipe, the olive oil is the first ingredient placed on the moistened rusks, sprinkled directly on the bread, or the last ingredient, seasoned with the cheese. Greek oregano can also be added with oil. Occasionally, chopped olives may be used as a topping for full dakos.
While dakos made this way are often referred to as dakos salad, they can also be converted into a more traditional salad by adding the ingredients to the bowl and breaking the bread into pieces. Less traditional salads combine the traditional ingredients of dakos with more non-traditional ones, such as sliced cucumber and onion, as well as lemon juice, dill, and salt and pepper to create a dressing. Chili oil can also be used to give the dish extra flavour. Fresh spinach leaves may also be included.
When creating a dakos salad, the greens, cheese and seasonings are combined and left to sit for about half an hour. This helps the flavors mix for a more flavorful salad. If the bread is broken into pieces, it can also be added to vegetables. The bread which is kept whole is placed in the bottom of a bowl and the salad mixture is placed on top of the bread and garnished with dill when the dish is ready to serve.
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