Shopska salad

Ingredients

• Tomatoes — in large dice4
• Cucumbers2
• Red peppers2
• Onion — in thin rings½
• Bulgarian white cheese — finely grated200 g
• Parsley20 g
• Sunflower oil4 tbsp
• Red wine vinegar2 tbsp
• Olivesto taste
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Char the peppers over a flame until the skin blackens, close them in a covered dish for ten minutes and peel them.

   20 min

2. 2

   Cut the tomatoes and cucumbers into two-centimetre dice and the peppers into strips.

   8 min

3. 3

   Mix the vegetables with the onion and parsley and dress with the oil, vinegar and salt.

   4 min

4. 4

   Mound it on a dish and blanket it with the grated cheese without stirring. Finish with olives.

   3 min

About the dish

The cheese is grated fine and piled on top rather than mixed in. It should sit like a cap of snow — that is how the salad looks on a Bulgarian table.

The pepper must be roasted, not raw. Charred over a flame and peeled, it brings a smoky sweetness a raw one cannot.

The dressing is sunflower oil and red wine vinegar, nothing else. Olive oil is not used here: Bulgarian sunflower oil has a pronounced flavour of its own that is meant to be heard.

Worth knowing

• — The salad is built just before serving. Salted tomatoes weep within twenty minutes and the cheese sinks.
• — The cheese should be salty and crumbly. Feta works, but it is softer and will not grate into the same snow.
• — It needs very little salt: the cheese is salty already, and two hundred grams of it go onto the salad.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

290 kcal

Protein

12 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

12 g

More from Bulgaria

• Banitsa — A filo spiral with white cheese and eggs, doused in yoghurt and bicarbonate before baking.