Sometimes our relatives come out of the table and say with pleasure: "Thanks," and sometimes, despite all our efforts, lunch or dinner ends in disappointment. "Like both fresh and tasty food, but still something is not It's enough, and our labors are not appreciated, and sometimes there's not enough simple cook stuff, some raisin when serving the most usual dish. "So let's talk about decorating dishes, because cooking and eating beautifully is great!
Even the most capricious baby will eat much more oatmeal porridge if it is decorated and served on a cute dish, made thanks to the decoration of dishes - a beautiful preparation. And you, preparing for him, can feel like a real creator, the creator of culinary masterpieces.
Come to the kitchen - it's time to cook dinner! Soup - delicious! Let's start with a traditional lunch dish - with soup. Japanese cooks, for example, gladly decorate broths with natural motifs. Autumn in the porcelain bowls swim bright red maple leaves carved from carrots. In the spring, after glancing at the plate, you will see a lotus flower carved from a bulb. There is no number of ideas and their embodiment. The simplest thing is to pour a transparent chicken broth into a plate, sprinkle it with white small breadcrumbs (it's also economical, you do not need to throw away the remains of bread), and then you open the space for your creativity.
Wonderful lake
Two leaves of salad turn into leaves of water lily, and cooked quail or chicken egg - into a lily. To do this, do not need any special tools. Take the hard-boiled egg and cut it with a small knife in zigzags exactly in the middle. Here are two lilies ready. On the edge of the plate can be arranged reed thickets. To do this, take pieces of fresh bread and gently insert in them twigs of greens. Get a delicious lake of chicken broth. From such a reservoir in the children's bowl just will not remain a drop.
Stars on a plate
If you have a thick cream soup, for example, from spinach or broccoli, you can cut out the stencil from the paper for baking (an asterisk, flowers etc.), gently put it on top, and at the edges densely pour ground nuts or bread crumbs for decoration dishes - beautiful cooking. A star on a plate with not quite favorite soup will help fix the situation.
Clouds in borsch
Just before serving, you can draw a cloud or lamb with a sour cream on a plate with borscht. To make a drawing, drip sour cream along the intended contour of the picture and connect these droplets with a thin wooden stick. And you can just lay out on the surface of a boat or a house of cooked long pasta. After all, the thicker the soup, the easier it will be to keep the three-dimensional decorations.
Spirals
With the help of sour cream or cream, you can decorate thick fruit puree soups. The same wooden stick will help to wrap steep sour cream or creamy spirals - vortices on the surface of strawberry or cherry soup.
And I want to eat salad
We pass to salads. To our little eater was interested, suggest him to mix yourself a salad. To do this, on a flat plate lay crispy lettuce leaves, and on them segments in the form of a circle - the ingredients of the future dish. It can be boiled beetroot, or bright orange carrots, cucumber strips, grated cheese, etc.
In order for grated carrots and beets to not give juice, do not rub them on a grater, but try to adjust using a knife-vegetable cleaner with thin ribbons. The main thing is to make a beautiful circle. In its center, lay a slice of seasoning to a salad or a sauce. That's so, playing, you can interest the kid with cooking.
Exclusive!
Slightly boring salad can be diversified with new ways of serving.
Salad in a glass
Lay the salad layers in a high transparent glass. Are you afraid that the little one can break it? Do not worry - take the same, only plastic. They are sold in almost any hardware store. On the edge of the glass you can put on a slice of lemon or a slice of cucumber. Your baby will be very pleased, because he eats almost like an adult.
The Magic Ring
From the used tin can cut out the bottom for further decoration of dishes - a beautiful preparation. Gently bend or cut the jagged edges - in front of you a serving ring, with which you can beautifully serve any winter salad. Light vegetable salads will disintegrate outside this ring, but dishes using boiled vegetables, with thick sauces, formed with this simple device, will look just fine.
If the jar (the base of the ring) was small, then on the plate you can build several such "towers" and connect them with "walls" from boiled vegetables or savory crackers. A real medieval castle on a plate!
We must certainly raise the flags on the towers, because the owner of the castle (your little eater) is also here. For the flag, use the reddish radicchio salad leaves, strung on a toothpick, or pepper strips cut out by whimsical bends. Well, all that's left is to blow the horn into the horn and start eating.
We're on a hike!
Salad can be served on a sandwich. Take toast, slices of bread for sandwiches or slices of pita. Lay out on such a basis a slide salad or pate and cover with another piece - the most delicious sandwich is ready!
Declare that you have a "marching salad" today, and it can be eaten in an improvised tent, for example, which is built of a long tablecloth thrown on the table. Of course, then you have to sweep away the remains of the meal from under the table, but how much fun it will be! "Camp" lunch will be remembered for a long time.
What's the second?
Garnish spreads to meat or chicken pieces with the help of the already familiar serving ring. Another option is to stain the mashed potatoes with the juice of beets or carrots, and then use a pastry syringe to put a bright side dish on a plate in the form of curls or figurines.
Chinese cabbage
Do you have large leaves of Peking cabbage? Make them "boats with cargo." In the middle of the sheet, slide the main dish (for example, pilaf, buckwheat porridge or mashed potatoes), into the center stick a stick with a "sail" from a slice of cucumber. Next, put the "anchor" - you can make it from a piece of sweet pepper, or you can just cut out the usual picture., Some convention in this case does not hurt.
Bell pepper
From sweet peppers you can make a beautiful fan that will decorate any second. To do this, cut the fruit in half along. Then gently remove the seeds, films and stalk. Each slice with a sharp knife cut into thin noodles. Do not reach the opposite edge by about half a centimeter. Each next incision should be slightly shorter than the previous one. Then gently use the spatula to transfer the workpiece to a plate and there already unfold it in the form of a beautiful fan. Patterns on the fan can be made from feathers of green onions. If you cut them from different sides and traverse them with the blunt end of a knife, they wind up in beautiful rings. This will be our decoration of the bright eastern fan.
Cucumbers
From the cucumber you can build a "grape cluster" and decorate it with, for example, a stew.Take a coffee spoon and, immersing in the pulp of the cucumber, rotate.With some skill you will get neat hemispheres. Lay them in the form of a bunch of grapes .You have contour molds for baking cookies - cubs, ducklings and asterisks? Use them to serve vegetable purees from spinach, beets or broccoli.
Firework desserts
The biggest room for culinary design, of course, is provided by desserts - they are decorated with fruits, caramel, chocolate.
Chocolate
With the help of a sharp knife chocolate can be adjusted with small intricate shavings. Cocoa powder or shavings sift through a sieve onto a plate. Lay on the plate stencils of butterflies, flowers and sprinkle cocoa on top, and then carefully place mousse or jelly on top.
Out of chocolate make outline figures. Take a sheet of tracing paper or baking paper and draw on them hearts, flowers, fir-trees, asterisks. Turn the paper over to the underside (to get the graphite pieces into the edible figurines) and proceed.
1. Place paper on the tray or cutting board.
2. Melt the chocolate and use a sachet with a cut off corner, draw the drawn figures around the outline. If there is a lot of chocolate, you can not limit yourself to the silhouette - fill the outlines completely.
3. Place the workpiece in the refrigerator. Once the figures have solidified, gently remove them from the paper with a sharp knife. They can decorate a homemade cake, cakes or mousse.
Chocolate leaves will be an ornament of any dessert. For them, you need to select live leaves of any color or tree, you can use home plants. The main thing is that these leaves are not treated with chemicals or would not be poisonous. Try to keep on these leaves at least a piece of petiole.
Progress
1. Leaves must be washed and dried.
On the back of the leaves with a brush, apply melted chocolate. The thickness of the chocolate layer is not less than 2 mm. 3. Place the billets in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
4. Apply another layer of melted chocolate to the leaves and place again in a cool place.
5. When the chocolate finally hardens, gently pull the petiole and separate the present leaf from the chocolate leaf. Sweet leaves move to dessert with a knife so that they do not melt in your hands.
Varim caramel
A small gourmet will be surprised when it finds out that you can eat not only dessert, but also its decorations from homemade caramel.
Take:
- 1 cup of sugar
- 5 glasses of water
- 2 drops of natural vinegar (preferably apple or grape)
Preparation
1. Pour the sugar into a saucepan with a thick bottom, add
water, vinegar and heat on the lowest heat. Do not mix! 2. When the syrup begins to boil, sugar crystals will begin to form on the walls of the saucepan - gently brush them with the edge of a damp towel. The main thing is that the syrup does not boil strongly. 3 The saucepan can sometimes be shaken, but it is impossible to mix the mass. If you drop a drop of syrup into cold water, it forms a solid ball - the syrup is ready! Remove the container with the syrup from the heat and put it in a sink or basin with cold water. In this case, caramel retains its beautiful golden color.
Crystal baskets
Caramel is ready, we begin to make jewelry from it. Very good looking caramel baskets.
1. Take a ladle or metal molds, spread their bottom with butter. Put them upside down on any flat surface.
2. Take the syrup with a teaspoon and a thin trickle water the mold in different directions. The main thing, move from the center to the edges. It looks very nice such a basket in the form of a lattice.
Thus, decorate with cold and dry desserts. From moisture or heat, caramel can easily melt.
Spirals
Spirals from the caramel mass can be rolled, gently and slowly turning a round long base (for example, a thick pencil - which also need not forget to smear butter) under the trickle of syrup.