Today, in the era of the maximum development of the restaurant business and the transformation of culinary into an independent and full-fledged science, preparing a delicious dish is only half the work of a kitchen worker. Guests look not only at the taste of the food, they are attracted by the non-standard decoration of salads and snacks. How to decorate cooked dishes? You will not find clear, rigorous and only true recommendations on this issue. They are simply not there. Turn on imagination and create. And I will share with you some tricks that I found and discovered for myself.
Firstly, the salads themselves can be made not round and not shapeless. It is better to present herring under a fur coat directly in the form of a herring fish, and make a layered salad of beef liver not in the shape of a circle, but in the shape of a heart. Like special cookie cutters, there are special salad bowls in the form of stars, flowers, crescents and hearts. Get some original salad bowls - guests will appreciate it no less than the taste of the food you cooked. You can even put goodies not in salad bowls, but, for example, in a wicker basket or in boxes for souvenirs wrapped in gift ribbons. As a plate, you can also use the peel of a melon, pineapple or grapefruit. These fruits have thick crusts. Pineapple or grapefruit stuffed with salad 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 the radish into a water lily. Decorating salads and appetizers with carved vegetables and fruits will turn your dish into a real masterpiece! Guests obviously do not want to eat such a snack: not because they will lose their appetite - on the contrary, the desire to try a tidbit will be strong, but the aesthetic feeling will not prevail, which does not allow you to put into your mouth for a minute what the cook worked for hours. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend hours decorating goodies in modern conditions of technological progress: blenders and all kinds of cutting machines come to the aid of the cook.
Thirdly, the decoration of salads and appetizers can be either edible or inedible. The role of edible decoration is often performed not by complementary products, but by the ingredients of the decorated snack. This is absolutely correct: extra decorations could improve the look of the dish, but ruin its taste. Banana decoration is suitable for yogurt filled with whipped cream sweet fruit salad. Decorating with spicy flowers and herbs is a great solution for oriental spicy and savory foods. Decoration of salads and appetizers with herbs is relevant for vegetarian and lean dishes.
Fourth, decorative elements can be of different colors and shades, but because some masters (as a rule, those who cook not for themselves) are fond of food colors. Artificial additives in large quantities can harm the body of the treat. In order not to endanger the guests, give preference to natural dyes that have been known for centuries: beets - burgundy, carrots - orange, eggplant - blue-violet, "ink" color, etc.
Often the idea of decorating a dish for a particular holiday is thematic, festive in nature. For Halloween, these are pumpkins, black and candles, for Valentine's Day - hearts and wedding rings, for New Year and Christmas - snowflakes and snowmen. New Year's recipes for salads and appetizers offer to prepare a Christmas tree- shaped salad and a puff salad in the form of a symbol of the coming year. The year of the rat was greeted with cheese snacks, decorated with mice with torsos of boiled eggs and ears and tails of thin circles and stripes of cheese. The “design” of a dish should be not only beautiful, but also as appropriate as possible, suitable for a particular celebration, occasion.