Romanian & Bulgarian · Salad
Shopska Salata
- Easy
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, fresh herbs arguing happily on top, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 2 red peppers
- 500 g ripe tomatoes
- 300 g cucumbers
- 1 small onion, or 4 spring onions
- 150 g sirene, cold from the fridge
- 30 ml sunflower oil
- 15 ml red wine vinegar
- small handful flat parsley
- salt
Equipment
Grill · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Grilling over live coalsSteaming: basket, leaf and lidSalting to draw the water out
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blacken the peppers all over directly on a gas flame or on the coals, then shut them in a covered bowl for 10 minutes to steam loose. 10 min
- Rub the skins off dry with your fingers and a cloth, never under the tap, and tear the flesh into strips, flicking out the seeds.
- Cut the tomatoes and cucumber into 2 cm chunks, slice the onion thinly, salt the tomatoes lightly and leave them 5 minutes to bead. 5 min
- Toss the vegetables with the parsley, oil and vinegar, check the salt, and spread them flat in a shallow dish.
- Grate the cold sirene over the top on the coarse side of a box grater so it falls as a white blanket, and carry it to the table unstirred.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes
- Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
- Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
- Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
- That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
- The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.
Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chianti Classico or Barbera d’Alba
- Also Right
- Vermentino for the lighter plates
- From the Taps
- Italian pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- San Pellegrino Sanbittèr
Tomato’s acid demands equal acid: Italian reds evolved beside the sauce, and the regional pairing is the safest law in wine.
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