Shopska Salad: Authentic Bulgarian Recipe with Sirene Cheese

Visit Bulgaria even once and you'll almost certainly bring Shopska salad home with you, in your memories. And not only there. Most travellers come back and write the recipe in indelible pencil right on the cover of their favourite cookbook. Luckily, everything you need to make this wonderful Bulgarian pepper salad is easy to find.

I first tried this Bulgarian salad in the summer of 1997. We arrived almost at night. Our landlady settled us in, took pity on the poor souls and gave us 50,000 leva for small expenses (that was before their denomination). In the morning we went for breakfast to a lovely little restaurant, Gerana, on the square.

Not knowing a word of the local language, we chatted away quite happily in Ukrainian. The cuisine was completely unfamiliar. We gave the waitress a proper interrogation: what should we have for breakfast? Maria froze for a moment and, puzzled, said: “Shopska salad, of course!”

That moment became a milestone!

Over all these years we've met plenty of remarkable and interesting people there. Just bumping into Demis Roussos face to face was something.

The locals told us a rather amusing story about Demis Roussos. He stayed at the top hotel in town, the four-star Laguna. Pool, restaurant, staff, breakfast in the room, everything just as it should be. In the morning he ordered breakfast and added: “Local food, your choice.”

The great Greek tried the Bulgarian starter and… the next morning his order went like this: “Shopska salad. Three.”

The Shopi are a people with South Slavic roots who live compactly in Bulgaria and Macedonia. They are famously thrifty and practical, and there are plenty of legends and jokes about them.

So what is Shopska salad? First, it's a salad of fresh vegetables. Second, it's almost always a starter, in both senses of the word. At breakfast the salad is just food, since drinking in the morning isn't the done thing there. But before lunch or dinner you're supposed to whet your appetite with a glass of rakia and a salad. Shopska salad, naturally!

Every housewife and every cook has their own version. But the base is always the same. You can combine whatever you like, but tomato, cucumber and brynza are sacred!