Canapés with Red Fish Roses

Name: Canapés with Red Fish Roses
Ingredients: bread or round unsalted crackers; 100 g cream cheese; 2-3 sprigs of dill; 0.5 clove of garlic; salted or smoked red fish; quail eggs; parsley for garnish

Today I'm sharing a festive and elegant red fish appetizer with you. This appetizer can be a wonderful alternative to the usual traditional open-faced sandwiches made with white bread, butter, and fish. I used lightly salted salmon — I had it pre-sliced, but a whole piece works just as well. The key is to use your sharpest knife for slicing.

Ingredients:

bread or round unsalted crackers
100 g cream cheese
2-3 sprigs of dill
0.5 clove of garlic
salted or smoked red fish
quail eggs
parsley for garnish

How to cook canapés with red fish roses

In a bowl, combine the cream cheese, finely chopped dill, and garlic pressed through a garlic press. I used half of a small clove of garlic — just enough for a barely noticeable hint.

Mix together. If the cheese is quite firm, you can add 1–2 tablespoons of sour cream to make the consistency more spreadable. Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a tip.

Make the roses. My fish was sliced into fairly wide strips, so I trimmed about a third off each slice (those trimmings will come in handy too).

Roll loosely into a tube.

Gently curl the top edges outward, as if opening up a rose. Here's what it looks like from the side.

Place the rose on a cracker or a round of bread.

Pipe the cream cheese mixture around the rose.

Garnish with parsley leaves (I used curly parsley, but any fresh herbs will work).

And here's what it looks like on bread. Use any bread you like — a classic white loaf works great if you want a flavor closer to traditional open-faced sandwiches.

With the trimmings left over from making the roses, I put together these little bites shown in the photo below. Trim the bottom of a hard-boiled quail egg slightly so it sits flat, and trim just a tiny bit off the top as well. Wrap a fish trimming around the egg and set it on a cracker or bread. Pipe cream cheese around it, garnish with parsley, and place a small piece of fish on top. I started with 8 whole slices of fish, so in the end I had 8 rose canapés and 8 quail egg canapés. The ones with quail eggs turned out to be the most delicious — as everyone probably knows, salted red fish and hard-boiled egg are an absolutely wonderful combination. And the roses are undeniably the most beautiful, though they're just as tasty, of course.