Many are sure: to make a holiday menu is a real art. Experienced housewives and culinary specialists approach this problem in advance, devoting a lot of time and effort to deciding what the table will look like for a celebration. Recipes of festive dishes are a personal occasion for self-expression, demonstration of one's culinary and organizational skills. After all, the dish should be not only tasty, but also original prepared and beautifully decorated. Ideally, both traditional and original dishes, author's salads, tender desserts should appear on the table.
Original snacks
Each festive menu necessarily includes interesting and unusual snacks. You are guaranteed to leave a pleasant impression on the guests if you make scallop scallop carpaccio with squid.
For this dish you will need the following ingredients:
- 500 ml of vegetable oil;
- two squids;
- 100 grams of scallops;
- one cucumber;
- salt;
- sugar;
- lemon juice;
- cilantro;
- Sesame oil;
- 30 ml of soy sauce;
- lemon zest;
- bell pepper.
Cooking Carpaccio
Be sure to include carpaccio in the menu on the festive table. We begin cooking by warming the vegetable oil to a temperature of 60 degrees, put the cleaned squid in it, and warm it for half an hour.
Cut the cucumber into strips, season with sugar, salt and lemon juice. Finely chop the cilantro and add to the cucumber, sprinkle everything with sesame oil. Dry the scallops with paper towels, cut into small slices. We take squids from oil and cut into rings.
Cooking dressing by mixing soy sauce with lemon juice and sesame oil. Remove the zest from the lemon and cut into strips. For carpaccio for the holiday menu at home, take two-color bell pepper, remove the flesh, cut into thin strips and fill with cold water.
Grease a plate with dressing and put scallops on it. Add cilantro to the dressing, cucumbers get rid of excess moisture, spread on the scallops, and squid rings on top. We decorate the dish with strips of bell pepper, finally sprinkle with cilantro and lemon zest. Our dish from the menu for the birthday festive table is ready.
Greek salad
Almost no holiday menu for a birthday is complete without one, or even several salads. For example, you can make a Greek salad with balsamic pearls.
For this salad, take:
- two cucumbers;
- two slices of red onion;
- a handful of iceberg lettuce;
- one bell pepper;
- seven olives;
- seven capers;
- 50 grams of feta cheese;
- a handful of arugula;
- two branches of red and ordinary basil;
- salt;
- a mixture of five peppers;
- 100 ml of balsamic vinegar;
- olive oil;
- agar agar.
Cooking
Be sure to include this salad in the birthday birthday menu, your guests will be satisfied, you can be sure of it.
Peel the red onion thoroughly, cut two slices and divide them into rings. Put iceberg lettuce on a bowl. Cucumbers and half of the bell pepper should be coarsely chopped the size of an olive.
We lay out all the sliced vegetables in a bowl, add to them arugula, capers, which we stocked for salad, olives with seeds and leaves of purple and green basil.
Now you need to prepare balsamic pearls, which will decorate our salad, make its taste amazing and unique. To do this, heat 100 ml of balsamic vinegar in a saucepan, but in no case bring to a boil. Stir constantly, dissolve half a teaspoon of agar-agar in vinegar. In the syringe, type vinegar, which by then should have time to thicken.
Pre-freeze olive oil in the refrigerator, this will take about half an hour. Squeeze the vinegar we obtained from the syringe dropwise into the frozen oil. You should form balsamic pearls, which should gradually drop to the very bottom of the bowl with the salad. Strain the oil with pearls through a sieve - these will be the main distinguishing features of your dish, which you will include in the menu of the festive table for your birthday.
Salad must be salt, pepper and mix thoroughly. We spread it on a plate, adding about 50 grams of feta cheese and onion rings. At the very end, dress the salad with olive oil.
Finally, decorate with balsamic pearls and basil leaves.
Beef Wellington
No festive menu is complete without a main course. The decoration of your table will be beef cooked according to the original recipe, called "Wellington".
Stock up on such products:
- 500 grams of beef tenderloin;
- five tablespoons of vegetable oil;
- two tablespoons of mustard;
- two tablespoons of horseradish;
- four tablespoons of paste;
- filo dough sheet;
- ten slices of dried ham;
- flour;
- sheet of puff yeast-free dough;
- one chicken egg;
- greens;
- 100 grams of champignons;
- two shallots;
- 70 grams of butter;
- thyme;
- salt;
- 100 ml brandy;
- 100 ml cream;
- one tablespoon of soy sauce.
Beef will be the main point of your holiday menu, so pay attention to it.
How to cook
A detailed description of the holiday menu with photos you will find in this article. Wellington beef will be one of the main dishes on the table.
We start cooking it by warming the vegetable oil in a pan. We spread the meat tied with twine on it. Fry it on both sides until crispy. After removing the meat from the fire, let it cool slightly.
At this time, mix horseradish with mustard, spread the beef with this mixture.
Now prepare the mushroom paste. We chop the mushrooms with a blender and fry them in the same oil in which we just cooked beef. You can add some more butter. We generously salt and evaporate the excess liquid.
Cut shallots into small cubes, mix with thyme and mushrooms. Pour the cream and brandy, stew the dish slightly. Put in a bowl and let cool in the refrigerator. A little soy sauce should be added to the already chilled mushroom paste.
We spread the dough on a plastic wrap, and on top dried cured ham. The next layer is mushroom paste, everything is carefully aligned. Then roasted beef and at the very end - paste. We wrap everything in a dense roll, in which we make small holes. Put in the refrigerator for a quarter of an hour.
We spread the beef roll on puff pastry, grease it with a beaten egg. At the end, wrap the roll with dough, gently tucking all the edges. Again in the refrigerator, now for half an hour.
Final stage. The cooled roll is laid out on a baking sheet with foil and greased again with a beaten egg. Having made cuts in the form of a herringbone in the test, we put in the oven, heated to a temperature of 220 degrees. The meat is baked for 40 minutes. The readiness of the dish is best determined using a thermometer. In the very center, the temperature should be between 50 and 52 degrees.
Fiendish mushrooms
Any celebration is another reason to impress everyone around with unusual dishes, especially if they have intriguing and mysterious names. Experienced culinary experts advise including a recipe for diabolical mushrooms in the holiday menu.
This is an original appetizer that surprise many with its unusual taste. We will need it:
- 200 grams of champignons;
- two tablespoons of mustard;
- two tablespoons of Worcester sauce;
- a handful of capers;
- one teaspoon of capers;
- three feathers of green onions;
- four cloves of garlic;
- salt;
- sugar;
- 150 ml of water;
- two slices of bell pepper;
- two tablespoons of olive oil.
How to get diabolical mushrooms
It will take you about an hour to prepare this dish. Mushrooms should be thoroughly washed and put in a stewpan. We add Worcester sauce and mustard, paprika and capers there.
We add chopped onions to the mushrooms, put the chopped garlic, pour in water, salt and add sugar to taste. At the end - a portion of olive oil. Mix all the ingredients.
The piquancy of the dish will give a little sweet pepper, cut into strips. This mixture must be boiled for several minutes and then cooled to room temperature. Devilish mushrooms are ready.
Cake "Pavlova"
Of course, no celebration is complete without dessert. You can buy a regular cake in the store, or you can make some original cake with your own hands. For example, a dessert named after the legendary domestic ballerina Anna Pavlova.
This is a meringue-based sweet that is usually served with fresh fruit. Usually with strawberries or passion fruit. They came up with it in New Zealand, where once the ballerina came on tour. According to the most common version, it was invented by the chef of a hotel restaurant in Wellington, New Zealand. He really wanted to please the ballerina.
If you want to cook it at home, then take:
- 120 grams of protein;
- a pinch of salt;
- 130 grams of sugar;
- 100 grams of powdered sugar;
- Strawberries
- lychee;
- 6 grams of pectin;
- 300 grams of cream;
- 30 grams of cream cheese;
- 50 ml lychee liquor;
- White chocolate;
- dried cornflower flowers.
Dessert Honor in Ballerinas
Beat 120 grams of protein with a pinch of salt. Bring the mixture to a light foam. In three passes pour 100 grams of sugar, we achieve the appearance of dense foam. Only after this pour in powdered sugar and again gently mix. We put everything in a pastry bag. So we get the meringue.
Now the meringue needs to be laid out in the form of baskets on parchment and put in the oven. Baked for 60 minutes at a temperature of 100 degrees.
At this time, we take lychee and 4 strawberries, grind them in a blender until smoothie and heat. Add 30 grams of sugar and pectin. Cook for two minutes. Pour into a bowl and wait until the mixture cools down.
The time has come for Chantilly cream. Beat until fluffy 300 grams of chilled plum with a fat content of 35%, adding 35 grams of cream cheese. Gradually introduce liquor. We also put the cream in a pastry bag and refrigerate it in the refrigerator. We glaze the bottoms of cakes with white chocolate.
At the final stage, lay coolies on the bottom of the cakes, decorate the lychee, dried cornflower flowers and strawberries. Your unique dessert is ready.