Decoration of salads and appetizers

Today, in the era of the maximum development of the restaurant business and the transformation of cooking into an independent and full-fledged science, preparing a delicious dish is only half the business of the kitchen worker. The guests are not only looking at the taste of food, they are attracted by the unusual decoration of salads and snacks. How to decorate cooked dishes? Clear, strict and only true recommendations on this issue you will not find. They simply do not exist. Include the imagination and create. And I will share with you some small tricks that I found and discovered for myself.

First, the salads themselves can be made not round and not shapeless. Herring under fur coat is better represented directly in the form of a fish-herring, and a puffed beef salad made not in the form of a circle, but in the form of a heart. Like special cookie molds, there are special salads in the form of stars, flowers, crescents and hearts. Get some original salad bowls - guests will appreciate it not less than the taste of the food you cook. You can even put the delicacies not in salad bowls, but, for example, in a wicker basket or in souvenir boxes wrapped in gift ribbons. As a plate, you can also use melon, pineapple or grapefruit peel. These fruits have thick crusts. Pineapple or grapefruit with a salad filling will not leave anyone indifferent!

Secondly, there is a special art of carving. Having mastered the basic skills of carving, you can cut a rose from a tomato and turn radish into a water lily. Decorating salads and snacks with carrots and fruits will turn your dish into a real masterpiece! The guests obviously do not want to eat such a snack: not because they will lose their appetite - on the contrary, the desire to taste a tasty morsel will be strong, but the aesthetic sense will not prevail, not allowing to send in a mouth for a minute what the cook worked on for hours. Fortunately, it is not necessary to spend hours on decorating delicacies in the current conditions of technical progress: blenders and all kinds of apparatus for cutting are coming to the aid of the cook.

Thirdly, the decoration of salads and snacks can be either edible or inedible. The role of edible jewelry is often performed not by additional products, but by the ingredients of the decorated snack. This is absolutely correct: unnecessary decorations could improve the appearance of the dish, but spoil its taste. Decoration of bananas is suitable for a yoghurt filled with whipped cream or a sweet fruit salad. Decoration of spicy flowers and herbs will be an excellent solution for oriental spicy and savory snacks. Decoration of salads and appetizers with herbs is actual for vegetarian and lean dishes.

Fourthly, the decorative elements can be of different colors and shades, and therefore some masters (as a rule, those who cook not for themselves) are fond of food colors. Artificial additives in large quantities can damage the body of the person being treated. In order not to endanger guests, give preference to natural dyes familiar from time immemorial: beets - claret color, carrots - orange, eggplant - blue-violet, "ink" color, etc.

Often the idea of decorating a meal for a certain holiday is thematic, festive. For Halloween it is a pumpkin, black and candles, for Valentine's Day - hearts and engagement rings, for the New Year and Christmas - snowflakes and snowmen. New Year recipes for salads and snacks offer to prepare salad greens in the form of a green tree and some puffy salad in the form of a symbol of the coming year. The year of the rat was greeted with cheese snacks, decorated with mouses with torso from boiled eggs and ears and tails of thin circles and stripes of cheese. The "design" of the dish should not only be beautiful, but also the most appropriate, suitable for a specific celebration, an occasion.