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…
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
ReplyDeleteun abrazo y gracias
I've never made it, Raúl, but there are some recipes here...
ReplyDeletewww.krinos.com/article/breads_of_Greece.pdf
Good luck...