Which came first: chicken or egg? This dispute is as old as the world. But why choose if, for example, when preparing a salad, you can use both ingredients at once. They are rich in protein and provide long-lasting saturation.
Olivier salad
It can be said without exaggeration that this is the most popular salad in our country. Although he has little resemblance to his ancestor. The salad was invented in the 19th century by the French chef Lucien Olivier, who came to Russia and opened a restaurant with gourmet cuisine. The salad, named after him, he invented especially for Russian guests, whose taste preferences he carefully studied. As a result, the salad included fried hazel grouses and partridges, crayfish necks, veal tongue and pressed caviar were laid out along the edges, and sliced eggs, gherkins and boiled potatoes in the middle. The specificity of the dressing was that mustard was also added to the mayonnaise sauce. The restaurant's visitors did not understand such a strange setting, and they mixed all the ingredients in a bunch, but they liked the taste of the dish as a whole. The salad received a special love of gourmets in Soviet times. But is it worth saying that in the era of deficit in the USSR, there could be no talk of any hazel grouses and pressed caviar? And so it happened that the gherkins in the homemade "Olivier" turned into pickles, and hazel grouses and quails - into any meat-containing product. The budget option is raw sausage, the expensive one is beef, but the most affordable and also dietary one is chicken.
Ingredients:
- Chicken fillet - 400 g
- Egg - 5-6 pcs.
- Carrots - 1-2 pcs.
- Pickled cucumber - 3 pcs.
- Potatoes - 2-3 pcs.
- Onions - 1 pc.
- Canned green peas - 1 can
- Black pepper, mayonnaise, herbs - to taste
Boil the chicken fillet or bake in the oven, cool slightly and cut into cubes. Wash the carrots and potatoes and, without peeling the peel, cook in advance in a separate saucepan. Boil the hard-boiled eggs in another saucepan. Cool everything, peel and also cut into cubes. Cut pickled cucumbers in about the same pieces and peeled onions a little less. Drain the liquid from the jar with green peas. Mix all the ingredients, add a little black pepper, mayonnaise and dill. In mayonnaise, in the best traditions of Lucien Olivier, you can add mustard. Mix everything well and put in a salad bowl. Registration can be done in portions. Put a culinary ring in each plate, tamp the salad tightly into it and carefully remove the ring. Garnish each serving with a sprig of parsley. Such a presentation will look more interesting on a festive table, especially on a New Year's table, because not a single New Year is complete without Olivier salad.
Carnival Olivier salad
Considering that the classic salad "Olivier" in Soviet cuisine has undergone significant changes, then our version has various modifications. So, you can take smoked chicken meat, which will greatly change the taste. Add non-standard ingredients for "Olivier", for example, mushrooms. Only eggs and potatoes remain unchanged. An unusual sauce, in which cognac is present, will add a special piquancy to the salad. If this version of the salad is made for the New Year's celebration, then surely all the ingredients for the sauce will be at hand. At the same time, it is prepared very simply.
Ingredients:
- Smoked chicken fillet - 200 g
- Potatoes - 200 g
- Egg - 4 pcs.
- Canned champignons - 250 g
- Apple - 100 g
- Salt, allspice to taste
For the sauce:
- Sour cream - 1 glass
- Cognac - 1 tablespoon
- Lemon juice - 2 tablespoons
- Nutmeg - 1 tablespoon
- Powdered sugar - 1 tsp
- Salt - 2 tsp
Cut the smoked meat and mushrooms into thin strips. As for the usual "Olivier", boil and peel eggs and potatoes, cut into cubes. Peel the apples, stalks and seeds and chop. Add immediately to the rest of the prepared products so that they do not darken, and mix everything. Add salt and pepper to taste.
For the sauce, cool the sour cream in advance, beat it with powdered sugar and salt. Gradually pour in brandy and lemon juice, add chopped nutmeg. Mix everything thoroughly. Season the salad with sauce and lay it on a plate. You can also decorate with the remaining small mushrooms.
Mushroom salad
Layering the ingredients in layers, smearing each layer with mayonnaise, and serving on a platter is another way to serve salad. The calorie content of such a salad is high, but you certainly can afford a small portion, because the salad is very tasty! An easier option can be made if mayonnaise is mixed with sour cream in a one-to-one ratio.
Ingredients:
- Chicken breast - 2-3 pcs.
- Onions - 2 pcs.
- Egg - 2 pcs.
- Champignons - 300 g
- Tomato - 1 pc.
- Cheese - 100 g
- Mayonnaise to taste
Layer salad should be done in stages. The preparation of the salad must begin with the processing of the food. Boil chicken breasts, eggs and mushrooms, finely chop the chicken and mushrooms, peel the eggs and grate them finely. Peel the onion, chop finely and fry in a pan with heated oil. Cut the tomatoes into slices and grate the cheese. If the cheese is hard, then on a small one, and if the usual one like "Russian", then on a large one.
Now it's time to put the salad together. First, sliced chicken is laid out on a dish in the shape of a circle, greased with mayonnaise on top. Then you need to put onions and grated eggs. There is a layer of mayonnaise again. Next is a layer of mushrooms and mayonnaise. Top - tomato circles, the last layer of mayonnaise. And finally, sprinkle with grated cheese on top of the salad. Can be served at the table.
Pomegranate bracelet salad
In principle, any ordinary salad can be served in layers. But not every flaky salad can be heaped up by simply mixing the ingredients together. It happens that the flaky design carries a certain meaning, helping to create an interesting shape, and the top ingredients are the color scheme. This salad is laid out using a bracelet-shaped culinary ring with a hole in the middle. There are many variations of this salad. In some, for example, grated boiled beets are placed on top. In this recipe, the top layer is pomegranate grains, so the bracelet turns out to be pomegranate both in color and in the name of the fruit. The only difficulty is finding the seedless pomegranate.
Ingredients
- Chicken legs - 1-2 pcs.
- Cheese - 150 g
- Eggs - 3 pcs.
- Prunes - 150 g
- Walnuts (peeled) - 150 g
- Seedless pomegranate - 1 pc.
For the sauce:
- Mayonnaise - 250 g
- Garlic - 3 cloves
Boil chicken meat for thirty minutes, cool and chop finely. Soak prunes in boiling water for twenty minutes, cut into the same pieces. Hard-boiled eggs, chop. Grate the cheese, finely chop the walnuts with a knife. Detach pomegranate seeds from the skin and white pulp. For the sauce, pass through a press or finely grate the garlic and mix it with mayonnaise.
The ingredients should be laid out in layers, smearing each layer with mayonnaise and sprinkling with chopped walnuts. Chicken meat is laid out in the first layer in the culinary ring, in the second - prunes, in the third - cheese, then - eggs and, finally, pomegranate seeds are placed tightly to each other on mayonnaise with nuts. Then remove the cooking ring and place the salad in a cold place to soak. Let the salad sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
Caesar salad"
And this salad has already become popular in new Russia - in the 21st century, although the world has known it for a long time. Of course, not from the era of the reign of Gaius Julius Caesar, because this salad has nothing to do with the great Roman emperor. The salad is almost a hundred years old. In 1924, it was first prepared by the restaurateur Caesar Cardini. Originally from America, he opened his restaurant in Mexico, and once the influx of guests was so great that all the products ran out, and there was nowhere to buy them. Cardini used the most common foods he had in his fridge: Parmesan, eggs, garlic, bread, olive oil, lettuce, and Worcestershire sauce. The bread, fried in olive oil with garlic, turned into croutons, and in our opinion - crackers, and he simply dipped the eggs into the no longer boiling hot water for just a minute and smashed them right onto a plate. The egg has become a kind of sauce. In our country, eggs are boiled and spread around the edges of the plate for decoration. And the lack of meat ingredients in Russia was not appreciated, therefore "Caesar" in our country is traditionally prepared with chicken. The Russian version of the recipe, of course, has more energy value than its American counterpart, but it is also quick and easy to prepare.
Ingredients:
- Chicken fillet - 300 g
- Eggs - 3 pcs.
- Cherry tomatoes - 8 pcs.
- Lettuce leaves - 80 g
- Parmesan - 50 g
- Baton - 100 g
For the sauce:
- Egg - 1 pc.
- Garlic - 1 clove
- Lemon juice - 20 ml
- Olive oil - 4 tablespoons
- Salt, black pepper - to taste
Rinse the chicken fillet well, cut into small pieces of arbitrary shape and quickly fry in a pan in a small amount of vegetable oil. Boil eggs for salad, peel and cut into quarters. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and grate the cheese on a fine grater. Rinse lettuce leaves, dry well and tear with your hands. It is believed that if the leaves are cut with a knife, then when interacting with a metal tip, the leaf juice is oxidized. Cut the loaf into cubes and dry them in the oven until you get crackers. Another interesting option for making croutons is frying in olive oil with the addition of sliced garlic. The croutons are aromatic, with a piquant taste. The main thing is to fry in a very hot pan and very quickly. Leave the garlic in a skillet.
Not everyone knows the trick that salad maker Caesar Cardini did with the egg. It can be used in the preparation of the sauce in the Russian version of the salad. Place the egg in cold water, bring to a boil and remove immediately. It will be used already during the serving of the salad. Pass a clove of garlic through a press, mix with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper. Mustard is also a good addition to the sauce.
The salad is not collected in a shapeless mass, but step by step. Moreover, this can be done both on a serving dish and on portioned plates for each guest. In the latter case, the main salad and sauce should be divided into equal parts depending on the number of people at the table. So, lettuce leaves are placed at the bottom of the plate, most often Romano salad is used. The leaves are poured over the sauce, and an undercooked hot egg is broken on top. Tomatoes are laid. Crackers are poured almost to the very top of the salad so that they are less soaked. And sprinkle with Parmesan. Slices of eggs are laid out along the edges of the plate. The salad should not stand for a long time, otherwise the croutons will, for obvious reasons, turn into gruel. When finished cooking, immediately serve the salad on the table. At home, you can serve salad without croutons at all, but simply put them in a bowl and place them next to the dish, so that each guest can add them to himself as needed - hard and crunchy.
