Tasty, original and very beautiful “Pearl” salad will be the main decoration of your table. After all, its main ingredient is caviar - red or black, and it always looks favorably on the table and fits perfectly into any celebration. There are several recipes for this salad: Red Pearl, Sea Pearl and Black Pearl Salad. But before you learn these recipes, let's first find out how to choose the right caviar for this dish.
Red caviar
When choosing caviar for a salad, carefully study the label and give preference to one made from June to September.
It is during these months that
salmon caviar is prepared from the freshest raw materials, while at another time a frozen product is used in which nothing useful has been preserved. If the jar is made of clear glass, consider the caviar: yellow or pale orange indicates that the product is overripe. When the jar is tilted, the caviar should move, this indicates that it has not dried up. In a metal can, a product can only be evaluated by shaking it. If the sound is too “liquid”, then set the jar aside: either there are a lot of bursting eggs, or food emulsion manufacturers added more than necessary. Well, the basic rules when choosing canned food: do not take swollen cans, pay attention to the smell, it should not be fish. Only kichuzhi caviar has an intense fishy flavor; any other will smell like that only when it spoils. Naturally, the Pearl salad requires the use of only a quality product.
Black caviar
If sturgeon caviar is made legally, the inscription "CITES" on the packaging will testify to this. Product color varies in different shades of black: from light to dark. Size may also vary. Large indicates that caviar was obtained from older sturgeon, it is more valuable, therefore, it is less common and more expensive. Pay attention to the presence of fluid. Its presence at the bottom of the can indicates that either the caviar was prepared from frozen raw materials, or simply poor-quality. An opened product should not have a fishy or, especially, herring smell. High-quality caviar practically does not smell, but, unfortunately, you can find out about this only by opening the package. Up to this point, you can visually select a product by looking through a glass jar. Having remembered all these nuances when choosing the main ingredient for your dish, be sure that the Sea Pearl salad will delight you with its taste. And now let's find out some recipes for its preparation.
Recipe number 1
One of the most spectacular in appearance is a pearl salad. A recipe with a photo already makes you want to try it immediately! To prepare it, we need two hundred grams of light-salted salmon, half a jar of pitted olives, 60 grams of hard cheese, five hard-boiled eggs, one orange, two tablespoons of red caviar, mayonnaise to coat the layers, spices and a little green onion. Divide the eggs into proteins and yolks and grate separately on a coarse grater, and cheese - on a fine grater, cut the salmon into slices, peel the orange, remove the partitions and cut the flesh into cubes, olives into rings. Now we form a salad in layers, starting from the bottom: part of the proteins with mayonnaise, yolks, half of the salmon with mayonnaise, olives with the remaining salmon, cheese, oranges and the remaining proteins from above. Add salt and pepper to some layers. We crown the “Pearl” salad with half a quail egg and red caviar, decorate with olives and green onions. By the way, you can cook and serve this salad by mixing all the ingredients and putting them in halves of an avocado.
Recipe number 2
This salad also looks great on the festive table, and a large number of vegetables in the composition makes it easy and healthy. So, to prepare the “Pearl Black” salad, you need to take a jar of canned fish in oil or tuna in your own juice, fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, herbs, green salad, hard cheese , olives, spices, French mustard for dressing and black caviar. Lettuce leaves need to be laid out on a plate, on top of them - chopped cucumber with cubes. Mash canned fish with a fork, add onion and French mustard, put on top of cucumbers, on top - olives, cut into circles. Next, tomato cubes, on top of them - a mesh of mayonnaise. The next layer is grated cheese on a coarse grater. We decorate the salad with herbs, tomatoes and black caviar. It looks very light, it is the same to taste: cucumber freshness in combination with caviar gives the salad some piquancy.
Recipe number 3
Another cooking option for this dish, this time with squid. Since the recipe contains red caviar, and the name was given to this salad - “Red Pearl”. We take the following ingredients: half a kilogram of squid, 250 grams of shrimp, one hundred grams of red caviar, four chicken eggs and mayonnaise. Clean the squids, immerse in boiling water for one minute, then leave them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, cool and cut into small strips. Egg whites grate on a coarse grater, like cheese. Small shrimps can be left whole or cut in half, large ones are best cut into pieces. Mix all the ingredients, season with mayonnaise and put in a salad bowl. Sprinkle with yolk, grated on a fine grater, decorate the Pearl salad with red caviar.
Recipe number 4
And the last, but no less tasty recipe.
This time, consider the Sea Pearl Salad. We take shrimps, boiled potatoes, fresh cucumber, tomatoes, cheese, eggs, spices, a little mayonnaise, caviar and two strong leaves of white cabbage. It can be served in a very original way: from two sheets we form a sink in which our “pearl" will be stored. However, it is possible to make not one large sink, but several small - portioned ones, and serve each guest present at the table. Three potatoes and cheese into a coarse grater, and we cut the eggs into cubes, like cucumbers with tomatoes. We combine and mix all products with mayonnaise, salt and pepper to taste. Put the salad in the “sink”, decorate with shrimp and caviar. Now you can serve any favorite Pearl salad to the table, the recipes for its preparation are quite simple.