Bulgarian Shepherd's Salad by Anna Nikolova

Bulgarian Shepherd's Salad

by Anna Nikolova

Country: Bulgaria

Prep. time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes​

Ingredients:

  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 large cucumber
  • 1/2 onion
  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 150 g marinated or sautéed mushrooms
  • 150 g feta cheese 50 g chopped ham
  • 50g sweet corn kernels
  • 150 g feta cheese
  • 2 hard-boiled eggs
  • olive oil,
  • vinegar,
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • fresh parsley and olives, to garnish.

BULGARIAN SHEPHERD’S SALAD

Steps:

  1. Chop all the vegetables and the ham and add them to a large bowl.
  2. Drain the corn kernels and marinated mushrooms (if the mushrooms are sautéed, make sure to cool them down first). Add them to the bowl, too.
  3. Mix the ingredients with olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper to personal taste.
  4. Place in serving plates and grate the feta cheese on top. 5) Garnish with parsley, olives and the hard-boiled egg wedges.

Tips/Tricks:

Some recipes include not only feta, but also Bulgarian yellow cheese, known as kashkaval. The taste is even better with roasted red peppers, instead of raw.

Why this recipe?

I am sharing this recipe because this is one of the most popular Bulgarian salads, often the first course of a traditional meal. It's a modification of the more popular Shopska salad, which doesn't include mushrooms, ham, corn or eggs. Bulgarian salads are light and healthy, as they don't require creamy dressings, but only oil and vinegar. It’s believed that the salad was invented in the 1960s by chefs at Balkantourist, the state tourism company. They wanted to offer tourists a typical Bulgarian dish that showcased the vibrant vegetables, as they believed the vegetables in Bulgaria were among the tastiest in Europe. The ingredients used were chosen in part because they are the colors of the Bulgarian flag - white, green, and red - and therefore evoke national pride.

Anna Nikolova