Meze Stall · Barley Rusk Salad
Dakos
Photo: Benoît Prieur / Wikimedia Commons · CC0
The base is a twice-baked barley rusk designed to survive months without going stale — farmers and shepherds carried it as travel food long before it became a market snack.
A hard barley rusk is soaked just enough to soften, then piled with grated ripe tomato, crumbled mizithra or feta cheese, olive oil and oregano. Sold as a quick meze at Crete's market food stalls and taverna counters.
Why it's made this way: Barley grew more reliably than wheat on Crete's dry terrain, and twice-baking it into a rusk let farming and shepherding families keep bread-like food edible for weeks at a time out in the fields.
More from Greece
Souvlaki (Σουβλάκι)
Koulouri (Κουλούρι)
Loukoumades
Spanakopita (Σπανακόπιτα)
🍷
Retsina (Ρετσίνα)
Kokoretsi
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries.
Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below.
Photo credits.