Shopska Salad with Roasted Pepper and Brynza - Bulgarian Recipe

Name: Shopska Salad with Roasted Pepper and Brynza - Bulgarian Recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 30 min
Cuisine: Bulgarian cuisine
Ingredients: Brynza 100 g; Tomatoes 2; Cucumbers 2; Sweet red pepper 2; Sweet purple onion 1; Parsley 4-5 sprigs; Olive oil 2-3 tbsp

Anyone who visits Bulgaria often knows that the first item on the menu of almost any restaurant is shopska salad, the calling card of modern Bulgarian cuisine. Try it once and you become a fan for life. There are as many versions of shopska salad as there are cooks making it, just like any salad of fresh vegetables. A salad with roasted pepper and brynza, for example, fits quite well into the idea of a special shopska salad.

I remember once in Bulgaria we ran into the famous singer Demis Roussos. It turned out he was staying briefly at a multi-star hotel next door. We were told a story about the famous singer ordering breakfast. The order went roughly like this: something local, whatever you think best. Usually “whatever you think best” comes down to local pastry, coffee and shopska salad. The great Greek tasted the shopska salad and… the next morning his order was: “Shopska salad. Three!”

Though, to be honest, shopska salad is usually eaten at the start of a meal, as a snack with the almost obligatory glass of grape rakia. Shopska salad (Bulgarian: Shopska salata) is a salad of fresh vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, pepper), generously topped with fresh brynza and dressed with olive oil. It is a superb dish, known far beyond Bulgaria. Shopska salad is also popular in Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, the Czech Republic and even Ukraine by now.

I read somewhere that shopska salad is not a historical dish and has no ancient roots. It was created by the cooks of Balkantourist sometime in the mid-1960s. Many people dispute its authorship, though, claiming that this salad is their national dish and that they invented it.

If you look closely, shopska salad has a lot in common with Greek salad, with shepherd's salad, and you can think of quite a few more variations, even a plain salad of cucumbers and tomatoes. Shopska salad with roasted pepper is a simple dish: if you have all the vegetables, it takes half an hour, no harder than a squid salad, and most of that time goes to roasting the pepper.

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Ingredients

2 servings

Brynza 100 g
Tomatoes 2
Cucumbers 2
Sweet red pepper 2
Sweet purple onion 1
Parsley 4-5 sprigs
Olive oil 2-3 tbsp

Step-by-step recipe

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When you order shopska salad in a Bulgarian restaurant, you can never be sure which salad you will get. Or rather, it will always have tomatoes, cucumbers and brynza. But different ways of cutting the vegetables, the presence of onion, pepper, sometimes black olives, and the dressing make it a completely different salad. In the vast majority of cases shopska salad is served undressed, and everyone pours olive oil over it to their own taste.
We prefer to make shopska salad with onion, sometimes green and sometimes sweet bulb onion. We really like shopska salad with roasted pepper and a little green or sweet purple onion.
For a salad with roasted pepper you need the freshest vegetables. Cucumbers should be crunchy and green, ideally just picked from the garden. The brynza must be the freshest too.
Tomatoes must be red and ripe, no exceptions. This is important. Large ripe tomatoes are even worth peeling. Cut the tomatoes into four, cut out the white core, remove the seeds and slice them into plates or cubes.
Remove the seeds and stems from the sweet red pepper, rub it with a little olive oil and roast it in the oven or microwave. Then cool and chop finely. In Bulgaria the pepper is most often roasted whole on a grill (skara) or in a special electric appliance, a chushkopek. I dream of bringing one home, but it's very heavy. Cut the roasted pepper into small pieces.
You can peel the cucumbers if you are afraid they will be bitter. Then cut them lengthwise into four and slice into smallish pieces. In Bulgaria, though, you will see quite large cuts, almost cubes.
Take a sweet purple onion, such as the Yalta variety, and cut it into thin strips. By the way, it is very tasty when a salad with roasted pepper uses green and bulb onion together.
Finely chop the parsley, leaves only.
Grate the brynza (Bulgarian: sirene) on a fine grater or crumble it by hand, as you like. It is best fresh, from brine, and not the hardest kind. The brynza should have the density of homemade cottage cheese.
You can mix shopska salad with roasted pepper right away and divide it among plates, but it is better to arrange the vegetables in layers or “sectors” and mix on the plate.
The second method is better, because the vegetables don't release their juice.
Arrange the cucumbers and tomatoes in turn. Add the onion and sprinkle with parsley.
Arrange the roasted pepper. If you like, add a little pepper or a pinch of dried savory. Sprinkle with grated brynza, like a white cap of cheese on top of the salad.
At the table everyone mixes the salad and dresses it to taste. The dressing is plain olive oil. You can add a little wine vinegar and pepper. Often 2-3 black olives are added to the salad, but in my opinion only olive oil belongs there.
By the way, did you notice that shopska salad with roasted pepper is not salted? The saltiness comes from the traditionally salty brynza. Drizzle the salad with olive oil to taste.