When setting the table for the upcoming holiday, to create the appropriate atmosphere, it is important to pay special attention to the decoration of dishes. Knowing some of the subtleties of decorating food, you can make a real culinary art masterpiece from simple products. Not everyone knows how to make dishes for the festive table with their own hands.
What is required?
A beautifully designed table is able to emphasize the atmosphere of the holiday. You can please guests with dishes that have not only an amazing taste, but also a beautiful appearance.
Even habitual dishes can be transformed at home beyond recognition, the main thing is to approach this process creatively.
In cooking, there is a separate direction in the artistic cutting of fruits and vegetables - carving. Whole bouquets for table decoration can be formed from products cut according to a certain technology. To cut complex elements, sharp knives with different blade sizes will be required.
Besides the products themselves and the kitchen tools, for a beautiful decoration of the festive table, the following devices will be required:
- skewers for serving;
- Toothpicks
- napkins.
The process is quite painstaking, time-consuming, so be patient and pre-calculate when and what dish to start at one time or another.
Start with simple options: improving the skill from time to time, you can become a carving guru.
Basic principles
One of the most popular ways to decorate dishes is to decorate with flowers folded from pieces of vegetables. A knife with a narrow blade needs to cut vegetables into thin plates.The core of the flower is formed from a plate of small diameter twisted into a tube. From the remaining thinly sliced vegetables, you need to make the petals.
The finished flower is fixed at the base with a toothpick. The following vegetables are most often used to create such an ornament:
- Tomatoes
- cucumbers
- beet;
- radish or radish;
- carrot.
Using simple products, you can create original decorations for holiday dishes. Green or black olives, green onions and bell peppers produce beautiful palm trees. To form a palm trunk, you need to put on a skewer to serve olives. The leaves of the tree can be made from green onions or from jagged slices of bell pepper.
From vegetables and fruits, you can create stunning animal figures or cartoon characters. If green grapes are pinned to the base of a pear with toothpicks, and black grapes are put on a narrow edge, you get a small hedgehog. The eyes of a hedgehog can be formed from small pieces of black grapes. You can make a poodle out of cauliflower.
To decorate sweet dishes, you can make small pictures of fruits and berries. It is enough to cut the fruit into slices of the desired shape and form an image from the obtained pieces. From strawberries, as well as from vegetables, you can build beautiful flowers.
Watermelon can serve as a basket for fruit salad or other sweet dishes. First you need to outline the handle of the basket on the peel of the berry. Then unnecessary parts are cut out of the watermelon and the pulp is removed.
To make the basket look more impressive, the peel of the berry can be decorated with a semblance of artistic carving.
Slicing
At the festive table there are always meat, fish, cheese, fruit and vegetable slices. Even such simple products can be beautifully served to guests. Slices from different types of vegetables themselves look bright. From vegetables, you can make flowers or just add greens.
To create a beautiful meat cut, all products should be cut into thin pieces. Almost transparent slices of sausages and boiled pork will be enough to spread out beautifully on a plate in the form of tubes, flowers or other means.
When forming slices from fruits, remember that it is better to cut foods before serving. So that the fruits do not turn black, they must be slightly sprinkled with lemon juice.
Cheese slices should be served on a large flat plate. It is recommended to combine different varieties of cheese, cut into slices of different shapes. In the center of the dish, it is customary to put a small saucepan or bowl with honey. The sophisticated combination will look spectacular.
A fish cut may include one or more types of fish. It can be cut in a variety of ways, depending on the variety and quantity. A combination of slightly salted salmon and smoked halibut will look beautiful.
Assorted fish is complemented with other products: red caviar, shrimp, mussels, vegetables or lemon.
Salads
Many salads look quite attractive and do not need additional decoration. However, you can always resort to some tricks of the original design and change the familiar dish beyond recognition. For example, a herring salad familiar to everyone under a fur coat can be laid out in the shape of a fish or decorated with carrot roses.
It should be remembered that for decorating salads it is better to use those products that are part of the dish or go well with all components. There are several basic principles for a beautiful salad design:
- Puff salads can be given a variety of forms: geometric shapes, animals, plants. For convenience, you can use special dishes or other convenient devices (for example, curly plastic boxes from cakes).
- With the help of certain products you can give the dish an interesting shade.For example, you can get a blue tint if the juice from red cabbage is added to cooked rice.
- Figures or flowers made of vegetables or fruits will be an excellent decoration of a festive dish.
- When making salads, do not forget about the dishes in which the dish will be served. A brightly decorated salad will look better in plain or transparent discreet dishes.
Hot meals
At the New Year and Christmas holiday table, there is almost always a baked bird. It can be chicken, duck, goose or turkey. Baked game itself looks quite appetizing and attractive, but quite commonplace.
For a beautiful serving of main dishes on the festive table, you can use the following ideas:
- Whole baked chicken can be laid on a plate decorated with lettuce and cherry tomatoes. A bird in pieces of pineapple or canned fruit will look more exotic.
- Duck is traditionally baked with apples. Apples in this case can be used not only for stuffing the bird, but also as a decoration for the dish. You can bake a few whole fruits to decorate them with a festive dish.
- A plate with baked goose can be decorated with greens (lettuce, parsley) and lemon slices. An original bird will look decorated with berries or fruits: grapes, cranberries, apples, kiwi, oranges or strawberries.
- Culinary compositions of baked turkey with berries and fruits of various colors look very nice.
Some recommendations
In addition to the beautiful design of dishes, you need to be able to properly set the table. Cutlery should be laid out symmetrically. Dishes should be placed in a straight line or in a circle if the table has a round shape. Napkins can be not only a practical item, but also an element of decor, if they are beautifully folded.
Table setting can be done in some specific style: focus on the time of year or the theme of the holiday. It is necessary to adhere to a harmonious combination of shades and shapes.
For any type of serving and menu, you should not forget about the beautiful serving of bread: it can be put in a special wooden bread box or a large porcelain plate.
See how to decorate a festive table beautifully in the next video.
