This Albanian version of the famous Russian Salad is called Sallate Ruse in Albania. This salad is the typical side dish (meze) for New Year's Eve dinner table in Albania. Gezuar Vitin E Ri - Happy New Year!!
Course Salad, Side Dish
Cuisine Albanian
Keyword Albanian Salad, New Year's Eve Salad, russian salad, sallate ruse
1smalljar of roasted red pepperuse as much as you want for decoration
2tbspschopped fresh parsley for decoration
Instructions
Soak the beans in water overnight.
Add beans to instant pot or pressure cooker, add about 3 cups of water and cook in the beans/chili setting for about 1 hour. Add a little longer if you didn't soak the beans. Use natural release function to release the steam.
Peel the potatoes, dice them and add to a small pot. Start cooking them. Do the same with carrots. Cook separately. Add green peas to a separate pot and cook them too. These 3 vegetables are cooked separately because they need different cooking times.
Cook peas, potatoes and carrots until you can pierce them with a fork but not until they become so soft like puree. You want the salad to have some shape to it, not become mush.
Drain the beans, peas, potatoes and carrots. In the meantime dice the dill pickles and slice heart of palm.
Start by combining potatoes, peas and carrots in a salad bowl. Then add pickles, beans and heart of palm.
Finally add mayonnaise, lemon juice and salt. Start mixing everything carefully, almost like you're folding the vegetables into the mayonnaise. You don't want to vigorously mix everything together.
Place salad bowl in the refrigerator.
Boil eggs and beets separately. Drain roasted peppers (this I used from a jar).
When salad is ready to be served, add sliced eggs on top, beets and roasted peppers. Decorate with chopped parsley. Serve cold.
Notes
Cooking time - I don't count soaking beans into water in the cooking time. I simultaneously cook beans, green peas, potatoes and carrots (each separately). Prep time is putting everything together while chilling time refers to the time after the salad is ready and is chilling in the refrigerator.
Salt - add very little salt if you are using canned vegetables since those already have some sodium. Adjust to taste. Cooking vegetables from scratch requires a different quantity for salt since potatoes tend to absorb a lot of it.