It is a meal that represents a deeply satisfying combination of taste and textures, pleasing, rewarding and gratifying to both eye and palette: the cool crunch of cucumber, the full-bodied fruitiness of tomato, the tangy bite of onion, the zingy sting of olives combined with the subtly-salty, tongue-tingling taste of feta cheese, anointed with oil and blessed with a scattering of herbs…
And, here, for those who want a taste of tradition, there is the Kalymnian salad which uses a hard, rusk-like, bread called koulourg twice-baked - like ship's biscuits - in order to maximise the ‘use-by’ date for the men who used to sail on the sponge-fishing fleets.Locals and seasoned visitors (though only those in possession of their own teeth) think nothing of chewing on these rock doughnuts in their dry, natural state; but in a salad the bread is soaked in a little water and oil and then mixed with tomato, cucumber and onion - chopped rather than sliced as in a Greek salad - olives, herbs and kopanisti, a locally-made goat’s cheese that is soft, creamy and more delicately flavoured than feta.
This is, frankly, not a salad for the faint-hearted, but if you enjoy tasting dishes that are steeped in cultural history then a Kalymnian salad it must be.
If, on the other hand, your idea of a salad is either a gem lettuce drenched in Thousand Island dressing or rocket and Parmesan drizzled in balsamic vinegar, then maybe you should take another look at the menu…
2 comments:
Hi there Brian, my name is Raúl, i'm from Spain and i've just come back from the island of Kalymnos in Greece, and there i fell in love with their salad, i read in your blog that they use a kind of bread called "koulourg", i have one "bread machine" in my house and i would like to ask you how is tah bread made, i guess it's a difficoult question but i hope you can answer it
un abrazo y gracias
I've never made it, Raúl, but there are some recipes here...
www.krinos.com/article/breads_of_Greece.pdf
Good luck...
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