Shopska salad, is a Bulgarian cold salad popular throughout the Balkans and Southeastern Europe. This is Bulgaria's most famous dish and national salad. The ingredients used were chosen in part because they resemble the three colors of the Bulgarian flag, and thus would evoke a national sentiment. It is made from tomatoes, cucumbers, onion/scallions, raw or roasted peppers, sirene, and parsley. The vegetables are usually diced and salted, followed by a light dressing of sunflower oil, which are occasionally complemented by vinegar. The addition of vinegar contributes, however, to the sour flavour that the tomatoes impart. In restaurants, the dressings are provided separately. Lastly, the vegetables are covered in a thick layer of grated or diced sirene cheese. This salad is often consumed as an appetizer with rakia.
History
Though the salad's name comes from the region called Shopluk, in fact, it was invented around 1955 in a Black Sea resort near Varna, called Druzhba. It can be found in one of the first state-approved repertoires from 1956. The development and popularization of the salad is attributed to the doyen of Bulgarian tourism Petar Doychev. It is a product of early socialism in Bulgaria, and part of tourist promotion, the only survivor of five or six similar recipes. At the time, leading chefs from Balkantourist invented Dobrujan, Macedonian, Thracian and several other salads with similar names, which were associated with different ethnographical regions. It turns out that only the Shopska salad survived. The salad has become initially an emblem of the Bulgarian tourism. It was approved as a national culinary symbol during the 1970s and 1980s. From Bulgaria, the recipespread to the cuisine of neighboring countries. Because the area of Shopluk is divided among Bulgaria, Serbia and North Macedonia, chefs in North Macedonia and Serbia began later to contest the Bulgarian origin of the salad. It is widespread also in Romania under the name Bulgarian salad. In 2014 Shopska salad turned out to be Bulgaria's most recognizable dish in Europe. It was the most popular recipe in a European Parliament initiative called A Taste of Europe.
