Dakos

There were a lot of Greek dishes that I ate for the first time when I went to Thessaloniki & Chania in the summer of 2008, and dakos was one of those. My aunt would make these as a snack while I was staying with her, and they were just SOOOooooo delicious! I've had to wait a while to replicate them, because I can't buy rusks east of Montreal, and it's an 8-9 hour drive from here...

She (my thia Renna) sent us a giant package of food a while ago, and included in it was a bag of rusks from the little bakery in Galatas, my family's village. So that was one authentic ingredient tracked down. Another was the bag of good Cretan wild oregano, still on the branch. I'll never be able to replicate the cheese she used, because it was made by my uncle with milk from his own goats! (and it was every bit as amazing as you'd think!), so I had to settle for feta...and feta made in Nova Scotia (Holmstead brand), which isn't terrible...at least it's produced by a Greek! My tomatoes weren't great, they never really are here. I realized they needed to be used up so I decided to take the plunge and use up my rusks so I could use them up, but they were already getting mouldy. I threw the softer of the pair out, but the second one was fine except for a bit of mould around the stem area, so I cut it off and used it (I wanted dakos and couldn't turn back now!). I'd read that it was best to put the tomato on first, THEN the olive oil if you have hard rusks you need to soften, so that's what I did...I threw the tomato in our new mini-food processor which left kind of a chunky, pulpy liquid. I was fine with this since I wanted the rusks to soften. Then I drizzled oil, crumbled some cheese, drizzled some more oil, then carefully crumbled my oregano over it all. I was worried that the rusks would have gotten soggy in the meantime, but they hadn't! In fact, they had absorbed little moisture at all, and were cutting up the inside of my mouth instead. Oh well, it was worth it because these were tasty! I think tastier tomatoes would have helped, and maybe I could have sprinkled some water on the rusks first? Dunno...

Καλή όρεξη!