Lakerda is bonito, cured in salt until it stops being fish and becomes something closer to ham.
Why forty days
Thirty days is common and produces something perfectly nice. At about thirty-five the texture changes: the flesh goes from firm to yielding and the salt stops being the first thing you taste. We hold ours to forty. A journalist from Kathimerini Gastronomos was let into the cold-room in 2023 to see it and wrote that the fortieth day is real, which it is.
How it is made
- Bonito (palamida) off the Maria-T, in autumn, when the fish is fat.
- Bled, cut into collars, and laid in coarse sea salt.
- Turned by hand every third day for forty days in the cold-room.
- Rinsed, dried, sliced thin and covered in Soufli olive oil.
How to eat it
Cold, sliced thin, with capers, raw onion and a great deal of bread. A small glass of tsipouro, cold, and nothing else on the table. Do not warm it and do not cook it.
Season
We ship January to April, once the autumn cure is ready. Between May and December the jars on the shelf are the last of that year and we will tell you when they run out, which they do.
Packed on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Two to three days within Greece. Write to us for the EU.