The appearance and placement of food on a platter or plate are essential in assessing food quality and flavor. No wonder they say that we "eat with our eyes." Side dishes for the main dishes play an important role, which make them tempting and arouse particular interest.
Side dishes must be recognizable, completely edible, flavorful, colorful, compatible with the main course, and easily digestible. It is good when the garnish is contrasting in color and at the same time complements the main product.
Using an ordinary knife, you can quickly make a picturesque vegetable bouquet. You can make a tropical palm tree from cucumbers and sweet peppers, and miniature fungi from radishes.
A few tips for preparing a decorative garnish
Soak carrots, radishes, green onion feathers in ice water. A vegetable garnish on a plate will retain its freshness and shine when sprinkled with cool water.
You can prepare butter as follows: make it soft in a water bath, and beat with a wooden spatula into a homogeneous mixture. Squeeze the butter out of a cone-shaped bag in the form of flowers, as well as into prepared bread molds. It is good to tint the whipped butter with food coloring.
Garnish the garnish with a palette of vegetables of various colors. Blanch vegetables or cook, adding citric acid to preserve color. Cut out small vegetable balls in a special shape, spread on a heated porcelain saucer with rainbow flowers.
Roast as a whole - roast turkey, fried chicken, roast young lamb, roast suckling pig, roast game - looks spectacular if you decorate it with a special hairpin with the image of an animal. Mushroom caps, boiled crayfish claws are strung on a hairpin, alternating with beautifully chopped vegetables and boiled rooster combs. Beautifully designed hairpins are stuck before serving into the finished roast and garnished with herbs.
To decorate cold dishes, you should use peeled boiled eggs, plums, pickled vegetables, and edible mushrooms. Cold jellied dishes are decorated in this way: make beautiful borders from frozen colored jelly, lay out interesting figures from the jelly mass. Decorate cold turkey and game dishes with orange slices.
Sandwiches need to be decorated with lettuce leaves, medium-sized branches of leaf parsley or dill, and slices of fresh vegetables. Recommended to be served on a snack plate. At the table they are eaten using a knife and fork.
