Want to pamper yourself and your loved ones? Or surprise guests with an extravagant snack? Nothing is easier! To do this, include seafood in the festive menu . Delicate pink shrimps, snow-white squid rings, curly scallops, juicy Saint-Jacques, octopuses and cuttlefish - the choice is really great. With seafood, any salad will turn into a vintage gourmet dish. True, you need to know some secrets of cooking the mysterious inhabitants of the ocean depths. In this article, we will tell you how to cook seafood salads on a festive table. Below you will find a selection of the best recipes. For salads, you can use ready-made seafood. It can be boiled shrimp, krill meat, and even canned food from a variety of shellfish. But the selection also has recipes that use raw seafood. This, first of all, concerns oysters, mussels, rapans.
Salad from Julia Vysotskaya
King (or tiger) shrimp are part of many snacks. But even smaller crustaceans can also make a delicious seafood salad . Recipes often include the use of already boiled shrimp. But Julia Vysotskaya recommends taking ten pieces of peeled, but raw crustaceans. They must first be thawed. In a bowl, prepare a lezon from an egg, two tablespoons of water, a pinch of salt, black and cayenne pepper. Dip shrimp into this mixture. At the same time, we heat olive oil in a pan. It should be sufficient to fry. We take the shrimps out of the leeson, roll them in flour and put them in a frying pan. We spread it on a napkin to drain excess fat. Finely chop the half of the red onion and three pickled small cucumbers. In a bowl, mix these two components, season them with the juice of half a lemon, 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, 1 tbsp. l Dijon mustard, chili sauce on the tip of a knife. Salt the dressing. One large tomato and half sweet bell pepper cut into pieces. We tear a small head of Romano salad with our hands. We mix these three components in a salad bowl. Dress with sauce, mix. Top with fried shrimp in batter. If desired, you can make such a seafood salad without mayonnaise.
With crab and broccoli
This dish can be prepared both in a budget version and for a holiday. In the first case, expensive crab meat can be replaced with a surrogate - surimi. But if we want to cook seafood salads on a festive table, let's not waste time on trifles and get a quality product. It will take three hundred grams of finished crab meat. Head out the broccoli head, remove the rough stem, cut into inflorescences. Blanch them in salted water for 2-3 minutes. Throw it in a colander. Put the cooled cabbage in a salad bowl, pour the juice of half a lemon. Two hard-boiled eggs are chopped coarsely, like crab meat. Mix everything, salt, season with mayonnaise.
With raps
This is a very simple seafood salad. The main difficulty is to cut out the bitter ventricles of the rapans. Then we boil these snails in boiling water (unsalted) for twenty minutes. Cool and cut the raps into strips. We pickle clam meat in soy sauce, and chopped onion rings in vinegar. Leave for half an hour. During this time, we cut into cubes two tomatoes, one bell pepper and two hard-boiled eggs. We shift the vegetables into the salad bowl. Add the eggs. Strain from the rapan marinade, also add them to the salad. Mix, salt, pepper if necessary. Dress with mayonnaise. Mix again. Leave for some time in the refrigerator so that all the ingredients, as they say, give their taste. Before serving, decorate the dish with rings of pickled onions.
With pear, grapefruit and shrimp
Some seafood salads, which are often cooked on the festive table, include seemingly incompatible products. Mix fruit and shrimp does not seem strange to you? Try this exotic salad! Fry a dozen large peeled shrimps on both sides for two minutes in a small amount of olive oil. Two pears cut into thin slices. We clean one grapefruit not only from the peel, but also from transparent membranes. We act carefully so that the slices do not fall apart if possible. In a separate bowl, squeeze the juice of one lemon. Add a large spoonful of olive oil and a small spoon of honey, season with salt and pepper, whisk. On a plate, lay the cooled shrimp, alternating them with slices of pear and grapefruit. Water the dressing. Garnish with a sprig of dill and ground cashew nuts.
Italian Octopus Salad
This dish is served warm on the table. Separately, you need to prepare salad dressing "Vinaigrette" (1 tbsp. L. Vinegar, 4-5 tbsp. L. Olive oil, 1/2 tsp. Salt, ground black pepper on the tip of a knife). Two hundred grams of octopus are boiled until soft. We also prepare two potatoes in their uniforms. We clean them, cut into cubes and fry in vegetable oil until crust. We divide six cherry tomatoes in half. We release ten black olives from the stones. Mix all the ingredients. Add the dressing “Vinaigrette”. You should know how to serve a warm salad with octopuses. We spread it on washed with ice water and dried lettuce leaf. Next we place the canned green beans. The whole dish should be lightly sprinkled with grated Parmesan.
Seafood and Avocado Salad
For this dish we need two hundred grams of boiled peeled shrimp. Peel the avocado, cut it in half, remove the stone. Cut the pulp into small cubes. We clean the orange, remove the white membranes. If the citrus is very large, divide the slices in half. A bunch of Iceberg lettuce is washed under ice water, carefully shaken off moisture, tear the leaves with our hands in a deep dish. Add avocado and orange. Mix, salt to taste. Seafood and avocado salad is usually seasoned with olive oil. Top with boiled shrimp. You can grate parmesan or any other hard cheese on top.
From the "sea cocktail"
In supermarkets, you can often find this frozen product. This assortment will make a very delicious seafood salad. The recipes for such snacks are numerous, but we will give here only one of them. Boil a "sea cocktail" in salted boiling water for about seven minutes. We recline in a colander, leave to drain and cool. I wash three large and juicy tomatoes into small slices. A bunch of lettuce hands tear into pieces. We make a gas station. We combine in a jar five tablespoons of olive oil and the juice of one lemon. Screw the lid and shake the container like a shaker. We combine "sea cocktail", dressing, tomatoes, salad. Mix, season with salt and Provencal herbs. Such seafood salads can be served on the festive table in different ways: in a dish, on a sheet of Beijing cabbage, in portioned bowls.
With scallops
Many people avoid salads because of their high-calorie dressing. But you can make this dish very dietary. We bring to your attention a seafood salad without mayonnaise and vegetable oil. About two hours before serving, boil 650 grams of scallops. Pour them with juice of one lime, sprinkle with two tablespoons of dry cilantro, rings of half a red onion, jalapeno pepper. Mix, cover and put in the fridge to pickle. In a bowl, mix canned corn (from 1 jar) with two tablespoons of olive oil. Season it with salt and chili. We cover the dish for appetizers with lettuce leaves. In the center we lay out scallops, strained from the marinade. We put corn on the sides. We spread tomato slices on it. We decorate the dish with avocado pulp and a slice of lime.
"Sea breeze with squid"
We peel these seafood and boil it for literally a minute in boiling water. Cut the cooled meat of two squids into strips. Separately, chop two onions in half rings. Sprinkle with sugar, scald with boiling water, pour a spoonful of vinegar. Set aside for a quarter of an hour. After this time, decant onion and mix with squid. Now let's think about how to season our Sea Breeze seafood salad. You can make a simple sauce based on olive oil and lemon juice. But a much tastier dish will come out under complicated dressing. Mix on a spoonful of mayonnaise, French mustard and lemon juice. Everything is ready!