It so happened that not a single festive table will look complete unless there are all kinds of snacks on it. Cooking them does not take much time, but they look beautiful, and they turn out tasty, and make the table richer, brighter.
Festive Fast Food Snacks - General Principles
Prepare snacks in the form of sandwiches, slices, salads, canapes, marinades, pickles.
Use a variety of products for cooking. You can divide snacks into several types:
• Meat. They are made from any kind of meat, sausage, ham.
• Fish. They take both fresh and smoked, salted fish. Do not bypass seafood.
• Vegetable. There is room for imagination. Vegetables use fresh, fried, boiled. They are combined with meat products, fish, cheeses.
• Cheese. Can be made from hard cheese, soft.
• Mushrooms. Usually pickled products are taken for speed, but often made from fresh mushrooms.
• Sweet.
• Mixed.
Holiday snacks can be both hot and cold.
In fact, the scope for creativity is great, you can use any products you have for cooking, combine them with each other, replace one ingredient with another, etc. It is important that the products are combined with each other.
1. Light meals on the festive table: herring in the marinade
Ingredients:
• 1 medium herring slightly salted;
• brown bread - half a loaf.
For marinade:
• 80 g mayonnaise;
• 70 g of acute mustard;
• wine vinegar - 30 ml;
• dill greens - 5 stalks;
• ground allspice - 10 grams.
You will also need five wooden sticks or toothpicks for fastening the appetizer and for beautiful serving three small leaves of lettuce and 4 sprigs of parsley.
Cooking method:
1. Prepare a herring: cut off the head, fins, gut, peel, remove all bones.
2. Cut herring fillet into slices 1-1.5 cm wide, put in a deep cup.
3. Prepare the marinade: put the mayonnaise in a separate bowl, add the mustard. Shuffle. You can buy mustard ready in the store or make homemade according to the following recipe: take half a glass of mustard powder, pour it into a small cup or metal mug, pour 1.5 cups of water, stir well and put in a warm place for half a day. After 10-12 hours, drain excess moisture from the mustard, add a pinch of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt and pour a little sunflower oil, mix again.
4. Add wine vinegar, add black pepper, mix everything thoroughly.
5. Wash the dill, chop and pour into the marinade, stir again.
6. Pour the prepared herring with marinade, gently, taking two tablespoons, mix, refrigerate for 60 minutes.
7. Cut the brown bread into thin slices in the shape of a triangle, rhombus or rectangle.
8. Remove the herring from the refrigerator, put one piece on each triangle of bread, decorate with a parsley leaf.
9. Secure each piece of herring with a toothpick.
10. On a flat plate, put pre-washed and dried lettuce leaves, beautifully lay out pieces of bread with herring.
2. Quick appetizers on the festive table: ham and cheese mini rolls
Ingredients:
• any ham - 350 g;
• soft curd cheese - half a jar;
• fresh basil - 5 leaves;
• allspice - 15 grams;
• olives - 3 pieces;
• parsley, dill - 3 branches for decoration;
• 3 sheets of lettuce to serve.
Cooking method:
1. Cut the ham into thin slices.
2. Lubricate each piece of ham with cottage cheese, spreading it well over the entire surface with a knife.
3. Wash the basil leaves and place one on each layer of ham directly on the cheese.
4. Sprinkle with black pepper.
5. Cut the olives in half and lay on top of the basil leaves.
6. Carefully wrap the ham plate with a roll.
7. Rolls obliquely into small pieces.
8. Wash lettuce leaves and place them on a flat plate or salad bowl and put slices of ham on them, decorate with parsley leaves on top. Put fried pine nuts and whole olives next to slices of ham.
3. Light meals on the festive table: mozzarella cheese and cherry tomatoes on wooden skewers
Ingredients:
• mozzarella cheese - 300 grams;
• 8 cherry tomatoes;
• fresh basil - 8 leaves.
For the sauce:
• 150 ml of olive oil;
• balsamic vinegar - 40 ml;
• 20 grams of black pepper and salt.
And for a beautiful serving, take another deep cup, a few lettuce leaves, 3 stalks of dill, parsley and wooden skewers to fix cheese and tomatoes.
Cooking method:
1. Before making the appetizer, first make the sauce: pour olive oil into a small cup, add balsamic vinegar, add salt, pepper and mix thoroughly.
2. Cut the mozzarella cheese into circles.
3. Wash tomatoes, dry on a towel.
4. Wash all greens and dry a little too.
5. Start sticking the ingredients on the skewers in the following order: cherry tomato, a circle of mozzarella, a leaf of basil and again a circle of mozzarella.
6. Dip each skewer with cherry and cheese into the sauce and put into a deep cup lined with lettuce, garnish with parsley and dill if desired.
4. Quick snacks on the festive table: mushrooms in batter and breadcrumbs
Ingredients:
• 8 small fresh champignons;
• 2 cups vegetable oil for frying champignons;
• 50 g of ground crackers and flour for deboning;
• parsley, dill - 2 branches per serving.
For batter:
• 2 eggs;
• half a glass of milk;
• 10 grams of salt and black pepper;
Cooking method:
1. Clean, wash, mushrooms, put in a pan with water and put on the stove, turn on a moderate fire, boil for at least ten minutes after boiling water.
2. Drain the water, cool the champignons.
3. Prepare a batter: break the eggs into a small cup, pour in the milk, salt, pepper and beat with a fork for 1 minute.
4. Pour the vegetable oil into a deep saucepan and warm well over medium heat.
5. Heat each boiled champignon with a fork, dip in batter, roll in flour, then in breadcrumbs and dip in hot oil, fry until light brown.
6. Put the fried champignons on a flat salad bowl, garnish with parsley and dill. Next put slices of tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers (rings) and other fresh vegetables.
5. Light meals on the festive table: cherry stuffed with shrimp and cream cheese
Ingredients:
• 15 pieces of cherry tomatoes;
• 15 boiled and frozen shrimps;
• any cream cheese - a small piece;
• salt - 10 grams.
And to make the finished appetizer look beautiful on the table, take some curly transparent salad bowl, a few lettuce leaves and three sprigs of parsley.
Cooking method:
1. Wash the cherry, dry it on a clean towel. Pick tomatoes in size so that they fit the size of the shrimp, that is, if the shrimp is large, then the cherry tomatoes should also be larger, and if very small, then the tomatoes should be small.
2. For each tomato, carefully cut the stem and remove the seeds with pulp. Salt the tomatoes inside and place them upside down in a hole on some wire rack so that all the liquid flows out.
3. Boil the shrimp in salted water for no more than one and a half minutes, cool and put in the refrigerator for half an hour.
4. Peel the shrimp, remove the heads.
5. Cut the cream cheese into small pieces.
6. Inside each tomato, put a slice of cream cheese, one shrimp.
7. Put the appetizer in a beautiful salad bowl, covered with lettuce, garnish with parsley sprigs.
6. Quick appetizers on the holiday table: potato pancakes with salmon
Ingredients:
• five medium potato tubers;
• one head of red and ordinary onions;
• 1 egg;
• 60 g flour;
• 1 small jar of sour cream of medium fat content;
• 1 small smoked salmon;
• half a glass of vegetable oil;
• salt, allspice - 15 g each;
• dill - 3 branches.
Cooking method:
1. Peel, wash, chop the potato on any grater. Squeeze well, mix and squeeze again, the mass should not be liquid.
2. Peel the onion head, wash, chop, chop with a knife, add to the potatoes, mix thoroughly.
3. Break the egg into a separate cup, beat with a fork and pour into the potatoes with onions, add flour, salt, pepper and mix well until smooth.
4. Pour vegetable oil into the pan, heat it well.
5. Put one tablespoon of potato batter in a pan, fry for two minutes, then slowly turn over with a spatula and fry on the other side for two minutes too.
6. Put the fried pancakes on a paper towel to remove excess fat and transfer to a flat serving plate.
7. Cut smoked salmon, remove the ridge, peel, cut into slices.
8. Peel the red onion head, cut into thin rings.
9. For each pancake, put a ring of red onion and on top a piece of smoked salmon, garnish with sprigs of dill.
Light meals on the festive table - tips
• All ingredients used must be fresh.
• It is better to prepare holiday snacks just before serving, so that they do not look windy.
• Appetizers on the festive table look appetizing and beautiful if they are elegantly decorated, for example, laid out on green lettuce leaves, decorated with fresh herbs, etc.
