When setting the table for the upcoming holiday, it is important to pay particular attention to decorating dishes to create the appropriate atmosphere. Knowing some of the subtleties of decorating food, you can make a real masterpiece of culinary art from simple products. Not everyone knows how to arrange dishes for the holiday table with their own hands.
What is required?
Beautifully designed table is able to emphasize the atmosphere of the holiday. You can please guests with dishes that have not only amazing taste, but also a beautiful appearance.
Even familiar foods can be transformed at home beyond recognition, the main thing is to approach this process creatively.
In cooking, there is a separate line of artistic cutting of fruits and vegetables - carving. From the products cut on a certain technology it is possible to form the whole bouquets for a table decoration. Sharp knives with different blade sizes will be required to cut complex elements.
In addition to the products themselves and kitchen tools, for a beautiful decoration of the holiday table will require the following devices:
- serving skewers;
- toothpicks;
- napkins.
The process is quite laborious, time consuming, so please be patient and calculate in advance 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 made of pieces of vegetables. A knife with a narrow blade must cut the vegetables into thin plates. The core of the flower is formed from a plate twisted into a tube of small diameter. From the remaining thinly sliced vegetables need to make petals.
Secure the finished flower at the base with a toothpick. To create such a decoration most often use the following vegetables:
- tomatoes;
- cucumbers;
- beet;
- radish or radish;
- carrot.
With the help of simple products you can create original decorations for festive dishes. Green or black olives, green onions and bell peppers make beautiful palm trees. To form a palm trunk, you need to put on a skewer for serving olives. The leaves of the tree can be made from green onions or from jagged pieces of bell pepper.
From vegetables and fruits, you can create stunning animal figures or cartoon characters. If you pin green grapes to the base of the pear with the help of toothpicks and put a black grape on a narrow edge, you will get a small hedgehog. The hedgehog's eyes can be formed from small pieces of black grapes. Cauliflower can be made poodle.
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 this or that 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 mark on the skin of the berries handle basket. After that, unnecessary parts are cut out of the watermelon and the flesh is removed.
To make the basket look more impressive, the rind of the berry can be decorated with a similarity of artistic carving.
Slicing
At the festive table there are always meat, fish, cheese, fruit and vegetable cuts.Even such simple products can be beautifully served to guests. Slices from different types of vegetables themselves look bright. You can make flowers from vegetables or just add greens.
To create a beautiful meat cutting all products should be cut into thin pieces. Almost transparent slices of sausages and pork will be enough to spread out beautifully on a plate in the form of tubes, flowers or in other ways.
When forming the cut of the fruit should be remembered that it is better to cut products before serving. To prevent the fruits from turning black, they should be lightly 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 place a small saute-dish or a bowl of honey. The refined combination will look spectacular.
One or several kinds of fish can enter fish cutting. It can be cut in a variety of ways, depending on the variety and quantity. The combination of salted salmon and smoked halibut will look beautiful.
Fish platter complement and 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 of the tricks of the original design and change the usual dish beyond recognition. For example, the familiar herring salad under a fur coat can be laid out in the form of fish or decorated with carrot rosettes.
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 the ingredients. There are several basic principles for beautifully decorated salads:
- 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, shaped plastic boxes for cakes).
- With the help of certain products you can give the dish an interesting shade. For example, you can get a blue tint if you add juice from red cabbage to boiled rice.
- Figures or flowers from 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. Brightly decorated salad will look better in a single-color or transparent low-key utensils.
Hot dishes
On the New Year and Christmas festive 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 ordinary.
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 salad and cherry tomatoes. Bird in pineapple pieces or canned fruits will look more exotic.
- Duck is traditionally baked with apples. In this case, apples can be used not only for stuffing poultry, but also as a decoration for a dish. You can bake several whole fruits to decorate a festive dish with them.
- A plate of baked goose can be decorated with greens (lettuce, parsley) and lemon slices. A bird decorated with berries or fruits will look original: grapes, cranberries, apples, kiwi, oranges or strawberries.
- The culinary compositions of baked turkey with berries and fruits of various shades look very nice.
Some recommendations
In addition to the beautiful design of dishes, you need to be able to properly serve the table. Lay out cutlery to symmetrically. Dishes should be arranged in a straight line or in a circle if the table is round. 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 a particular 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.
With any kind of serving and menu, you should not forget about the beautiful bread serving: you can put it in a special wooden breadbasket or a large porcelain plate.
How beautifully to decorate a celebratory table, look in the following video.
