Zambolis apartments

Zambolis apartments
For your holidays in Chania

Monday 18 November 2013

Dakos in a jar - and a giveaway (Ντάκος σε βαζάκι)

Giveaway! To be in the draw, leave a comment on this post. 

Dakos is the now famously healthy Cretan snack made of paximadi (hard barley rusks), topped with grated tomato, mizithra (Cretan soft white cheese) and olive oil. Extras include perhaps some oregano, olives and capers, but not much else. Dakos is eaten throughout the summer in Crete when there is an abundance of fresh tomatos. It has also become very well known among other Greeks, who can now buy Cretan rusks and extra virgin olive oil on the market throughout the country. Tomato is available all year round, but because the best tasting tomatos grow in the summer, Cretans don't usually make this snack in the winter. Mizithra is replaced by crumbled feta for those who don't have access to the fresh Cretan cheese, which does not enjoy a long shelf life. Mizithra is sold very fresh, but it freezes extremely well, and mainlanders have been known to cart dozens of kilos of mizithra from the island while they are on holiday to take it back home with them on the ferry boat, which of course offers refrigeration storage facilities. It's a very easy snack to prepare, and can act as a main meal.

In the market-oriented world that we are living in now, the widespread availability of fresh food to prepare your favorite meals is not enough - if we can have something frozen or bottled, so that we don't have to do any preparation whatsoever, but just defrost/open the packet/bottle, it is regarded as sometimes even more preferable than fast food. It's a fast-paced world, even in a crisis. But even in such a fast world, I was still surprised to see this new product on the supermarket shelf, the other day, as I turned to leave the deli section: sitting on a prominent position on the promotion shelf was a jar carrying the label Dako's (at a cost of €2.95 for a jar containing 300g).

Dakos in a jar?! That's a difficult one to imagine, but the label does specifically say: "Σάλτσα για παξιμάδι με ελαιόλαδο, φέτα και μυζήθρα)" (Sauce for hard rusks with olive oil, feta and mizithra). In the company's website, the product description states the contents as: "tomato concasse, feta cheese, water, mizithra cheese, extra virgin olive oil, sundried tomatoes, sugar, corn starch, oregano, citric acid, lactic acid", while serving suggestions include as a spread on rusks and bakery products, on canapes, as a pasta sauce, and a salad dressing. These methods of use are very sound, given the texture of the product, which looks rather liquid and dense.

It certainly won't give the real effect of grated tomato and mizithra cheese on rusks, but it might act as a good substitute for that very languished Greek abroad, who yearns for the taste of home. For the average Greek holidaymaker, it may also bring back memories of a holiday under the sun - Dako's may yet be the perfect substitute. These two points bring it home to us that this new product, despite being produced locally, from local/Greek ingredients of high international repute, may actually not be destined for the local market: it is probably suited to foreign tastes serving foreign interests.

Black Truffle Slices in Olive Oil  45grThere are in fact many new products now on the Greek market which often sound strange to the average Greek. Things like wild sea salt in fancy packaging, truffles preserved in olive oil, farmed cooked frozen snails, masticha capsules, seafood sausages, and olive oil in fancy bottles, among many others. Many of these products would interest the average Greek too, but they are, generally speaking, expensive products, not directly aimed towards Greek buyers. They are being produced for export to the international markets a premium prices. In  my presentation at the 2nd Symposium of Greek Gastronomy: Food, Memory and Identity in Greece and the Greek Diaspora, I spoke about the "Greek food craze" abroad:
"Despite the bad reputation of the Greek economy in global terms, we find that Greek cuisine enjoys a record high degree of popularity. Greek food is being recognised in Western countries in ways that it was not considered in the past. This is possibly due to the perceived health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, its high reliance on cooking with olive oil and fresh vegetables, and the taste quality of export-value Greek food products. The economic crisis has partly fuelled this foreign interest because the main export products in Greece are to do with food. 
 Greek extra virgin olive oil packaging   Terra Creta"In the scramble for market share, suddenly Greek food is being exported in all sorts of forms at all sorts of prices. Farmed snails, olive oil in decorative bottle designs, truffles found in Greece, mastich crystals and mastich-flavoured drinks, among others, including some of the more well-known products such as wine, honey, feta and olives, coupled with the 'organic' label, are being sold at the high end of the market. Some of these products are not being targeted towards the local market, eg farmed snails and olive oil in decorative bottles; they would be considered by most Greeks as over-priced as well as easily replaced by cheaper and more readily-available products.
In terms of the economic crisis, what is the degree to which these enterprises benefited from it? Did they originate in the economic crisis, or were they a natural progression of the Greek food export market? Has food marketing in Greece changed to accommodate a new kind of post-crisis food market or is this Greek food craze a purely foreign export issue? These food-based questions all provide some kind of insight into the Greek identity.
I have decided not to open my jar of Dako's, as it does feel a little squeamish to me, opening a jar to make dakos in Crete. Besides, winter is setting in slowly and there will no longer be any more fresh tomatoes to grate, so our dakos-eating season will be put on hold until the warmer season returns next year (yes, dakos is a seasonal dish). But I can't leave Dako's sitting around unused in my pantry (despite the August 2015 best-before date): I have decided to gift it through a giveaway, to any very languished Greek(-o-phile) that leaves a comment on this post, who may wish to recreate a taste of Crete before their next trip. I've also added a packet of paximathi (barley rusks) with olive pieces* added to them to accompany your Dako's.
GIVEAWAY! If you are the winner (to be announced this coming Sunday), hopefully, you will get it before Christmas (did you know that Greek post offices now open on Saturday?!), and you can let me know if it worked out for you! To be in the draw, leave a comment on this post.  

* Barley rusks with olive pieces are also a novelty, but these are made by a local company, and are destined for the local market: their packaging is flimsy, monolingually Greek and lacking appeal - but they are a welcome change for the local who is looking around to spend his/her money in a different way; it's a start to new ways of thinking.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

14 comments:

  1. Oddly I knew about dakos when I was in Samos. We arrived at the hotel at about noon, we dropped the bags, got our car and drove to Psilli Amos beach. There we had dinner in a small taverna, the owner was a very nice guy moved there from Athens. I asked him a greek salad (I was waiting for one year to have a decent greek salad!) but he told "No, greek salad is for tourists, I will take you somethimng better". And after a 15-20 minutes (I already emptied my first bottle of Alfa) he come back with this beatiful plate with rusks, chopped tomato, cheese, oil and oregano.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Maria, sounds to me like the taste of Greece in a jar!! Καλή βδομάδα!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dalos was a favourite snack every time I went to Crete. It's so funny that the jar has the unneeded apostrophe!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think that Dakos is my favourite Cretan food. I come back home with barley rusks and try to recreate the taste and texture back here in the UK but the tomatoes do not have the richness of flavour that I find in Crete - although they are infinitely better than they used to be thanks to the explosion of organic markets etc. I always enjoy introducing new visitors to Crete (we go a couple of times a year to the south east) to Dakos and watching their faces. Never had anyone who didn't like it. I find feta is a very satisfactory substitute for mizithra

    ReplyDelete
  5. There is a craze about greek yoghurt in the States at the moment. Trendy american girls specialising as make-up gurus were asking my daughter in a forum how can they pronounce FAGE cause they thought it was pronounced "feidz" like the word page.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dakos in a jar sounds so counter-intuitive that, as a languished Greek (!) I am (apprehensively) curious! May be worth sacrificing one of my paximadia to try it out, if I can get my hands on it..

    Thanks for the post, Maria!

    ReplyDelete
  7. For those teenage girls asking how to pronounce "Fage." All they had to do was read the label on the yogurt container. It clearly states, "Fah-Yay."

    ReplyDelete
  8. Did you know that Lidl do paximathi with olive pieces in now?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi Maria

    I am not really sure if your giveaway is only open to Greece residents, but I hope it's okay to enter.
    I actually had dakos for breakfast at the hotel when visiting Crete in September, and since we are planning a little Greek get-together with our travel friends this winter, Dakos might be a good way to bring back a little summer.

    Hope you are all doing well - did you taste the Danish schnapps yet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. it is open to everyone - i ship anywhere!
      yes, thanks for the schnapps, it is really nice, an interesting change to raki - we still have not lit a fire (!!!) so i am waiting to use it more when we do!!!!

      Delete
  10. Great Maria ,if I win it will go all the way to TEXAS yeehaa,Yanni D

    ReplyDelete
  11. Well, I'm in for the giveaway too :p

    The recovery from the accident is slow and I'm still in a bit of pain, but back to work :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Great present!! Thanks a lot! I keep my fingers crossed!!

    ReplyDelete