Salads are a great way to incorporate a variety of nutritious foods into your diet, as they are often packed with vitamins, minerals, and fibre. They can also be customised to suit personal taste preferences and dietary restrictions. Typically made up of a mixture of raw or cooked vegetables, fruits, grains, and sometimes protein, there are a variety of salads made across the world.
As such, Taste Atlas, an experiential travel guide founded by Matija Babic for traditional food that collates authentic recipes, food critic reviews, and research articles about popular ingredients and dishes, recently released the list of best-rated salads in the world.
Greece’s Dakos, which is a traditional Cretan dish, topped the rankings. It consists of “a dry barley rusk called paximadi that is topped with crumbled myzithra cheese, chopped ripe tomatoes, whole olives, capers, fresh oregano, and a few generous splashes of high-quality olive oil”, Taste Atlas wrote.
They added that it’s recommended to use olive varieties such as Koroneiki, Lianes, or Tsounates. “Myzithra cheese is traditionally used, and not feta, which is usually reserved for tourist restaurants. The rusk is often gently rubbed with a small piece of garlic and lightly sprinkled with sea salt.”
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Dakos salad, also known as "koukouvagia" or "Cretan Salad," is a traditional Greek salad from the island of Crete. It is made with simple ingredients such as tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, feta cheese, and olives, but it has a unique twist - the base of the salad is made with dried bread, typically barley rusk, which is soaked in water to soften it and then topped with the fresh ingredients.
Here’s a simple recipe for Dakos salad, as shared by Dimitra’s Dishes.
Ingredients:
- 1 Dako (barley rusk), toasted whole grain bread may be substituted
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 shallot
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Feta cheese (about 1/4 cup)
- 2 Kalamata olives, sliced and pitted
- Dried oregano
- Sea salt
Method
- If using toasted bread, do not wet it at all.
- Begin by dipping the rusk in water. Do this quickly so that the rusk moistens but does not soak in the water. The flavour should come from the tomatoes and olive oil, not the water.
- Place the moistened rusk on a plate.
- Grate one of the tomatoes on a box grater and chop the other.
- Drizzle some olive oil over the rusk.
- Top with the grated tomato. Season with some sea salt.
- Place the chopped tomato over the grated and season with more sea salt.
- Crumble the feta cheese on top and garnish with the sliced olives.
- Slice the shallot finely and add it to your rusk.
- Drizzle generously with more olive oil and add the dried oregano on top.