Cook and Scale
Cretan Dakos
2 servings · 50 min total
A hard oven-dried rusk moistened with nothing but grated tomato and olive oil, then piled with feta, olives and capers. Served whole and never tossed.
Ingredients
- 4 whole grain bread, cut 2 cm thick
- 2 tomato, very ripe
- 100 g feta
- 60 g black olives, pitted
- 1 tbsp capers, rinsed and drained
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp red wine vinegar
- salt to taste
Contains: Gluten, Milk, Sulphites
Allergen info is best-effort — please verify yourself.
Method
- 1.
Dry the bread into rusks — Heat the oven to 150°C and lay the bread slices directly on the oven rack. Bake for 35 minutes, turning them once, until they are dry all the way through and knock hollow — a rusk, not a piece of toast.
- 2.
Cool until hard — Leave the rusks to cool completely on the rack, at least 15 minutes. They harden further as they cool, and that hardness is the whole point — a soft rusk collapses into mush the moment the tomato touches it.
- 3.
Grate and season the tomato — Halve the tomatoes and grate them on the coarse side of a box grater over a bowl, holding the skin flat and discarding it when only the shell is left. Season the pulp with salt and the vinegar and leave it for 5 minutes.
- 4.
Moisten the rusks — Set the rusks on plates and spoon just a tablespoon of the tomato juice over each, then drizzle with half the olive oil and let it soak in. The rusk should soften at the surface but still fight back in the middle.
- 5.
Top with feta and olives — Pile the grated tomato on top, crumble the feta over in rough lumps and add the olives and capers. Dust with oregano, finish with the remaining olive oil and eat within a few minutes, while the rusk still has bite.