‘Glorious fruits of sparsity’ warmed by the Cretan sun

Bread, oil, ripe tomatoes… the humble dish ‘dakos’ has travelled far from its roots, says William Sitwell

To appreciate fully the Cretan dish of dakos – which is both the name of the key ingredient, a rusk usually made from barley, and the salad that features it – one must imagine Greece as it once was. More specifically, how Crete used to be, from back in the mists of time to just a couple of decades ago. Because modernity more or less destroys the need for it. A world of sophisticated transport logistics and fridges renders the requirement of dakos surplus. So we must cling on to it; embrace it like an old friend, demand it and savour it.

Imagine the scene: you are a traveller; you have spent the morning picking your way over some ancient Minoan remains, pondering the well-made walls and admiring the foundations that meant 3,500 years later there would be remnants to be admired all over the largest of Greece’s islands.

It is July, steaming hot and, approaching lunchtime, you seek respite from both relics and the sun and find a sheltered table at a simplelooking taverna in a neighbouring village. There are no men: instead, a toothless, smiling old crone dressed in black fetches you the first of what dishes there are in the kitchen.

This first plate, an appetiser, is a dakos. It perfectly represents what is available at this time of year on this part of the island: some hard bread, softened and hydrated with water and oil, topped with slices of beautifully ripe tomatoes, sprinkled with salt; the tomatoes served almost warm, having perhaps caught the rays of the sun while they sat in a bowl in the kitchen.

Herewith the glorious fruits of sparsity. Not every family in Crete would bake bread daily and not everyone lived near a bakery. So, for the days when the fresh bread didn’t arrive, the store cupboard housed some bread that was deliberately hard; indeed, twice-baked then dehydrated. And such rusks weren’t just the worthy staple of the more remote Cretan villagers: shepherds took them with them as they set off in the morning to scour the hills and mountains for goats; farmers ate them too; as did sailors. And as they were made from barley, not flour, they tended to have a more significant nutritional value. Good Greek cooks and nutritionists will tell you that the simple looking, hard-as-brick rusk is stuffed full of vitamin B, magnesium, selenium and antioxidants.

Quite why dakos is a uniquely Cretan idea is a mystery, as every other island in Greece would have faced similar sets of circumstances. Yet there it is and today, while the remoter villages in the high mountains of Crete might still have genuine cause for a dakos, the dish is now a familiar item on menus across the island.

Often you will get the dish topped with local cheese – a feta or mizithra (a softer cheese, not unlike ricotta) – and of course drizzled with olive oil and flecked with dried oregano.

Over the years, while dakos has been seen as a Greek version of bruschetta (but one where the bread is supposed to be hard rather than, as with the Italian antipasto, having gone hard and become the tasty upshot of leftovers), it has

taken centre stage in some places. That’s right: it has been elevated from a mere appetizer or side dish to a salad.

So you might now see it advertised as a country salad – in other words, a Greek salad with rusks. In such circumstances it does make for a nice bite as, when used as croutons, some bits of the rusks are soft and some still have some crunch.

The smarter establishments in Crete often add ingredients to dakos that are far removed from its peasant origins. One snazzy restaurant I ate in, for example, saw mussels removed from their shells and placed on a bed of dakos. The old woman from the village taverna would no doubt have harrumphed and tutted, believing there was an essential time and a place for a Cretan rusk.

Cretans who miss the motherland can now buy dakos rusks in packets. They might sprinkle them in water, or better still, squeeze the juice from a ripe tomato over them. Next they might add some chopped onion, before adding that cheese, the herbs, oil and salt. And with a chilled glass of white Cretan assyrtiko, they will get a taste of the simple good old days.

The smarter establishments add ingredients far removed from its peasant origins, such as shelled mussels