Make Room in Your Heart for Cheeses
Make cheese your guest, cheese loves you the best
Gather round, friends and neighbors, while I bring you the good word. Yes, today we celebrate that great joy in times of darkness, that source of light and of sustenance to the soul and to the body. CHEESE!, we sing out, and we sing CHARCUTERIE!
If you know me, you know that my primary love language is enormous piles of food. Food in amounts that are verging on the unwelcome. Just absolute mountains of tasty treats that the people I’ve invited into my home could never even come close to consuming. And what better way to say love, to say welcome, to signal generosity and abundance than a board heaped with cheeses, charcuterie, and all the tasty little bits that round out a great cheese plate?
The best thing about a cheese plate is that anyone can make a very good one. Absolutely no cooking skills required! A willingness to have a chat with your local monger will go a long way (RIP Boston Cheese Cellar, I am on the lookout for a new cheesemonger if anyone has Boston area recommendations!), or a tendency to hoard odd little packages of dried fruits and flavored honeys and tiny jars of local jams. The weirder and wider the stuff you have in your pantry, the more fun the flavor combinations you get to build. But the biggest secret is that you don’t actually need any fancy foods. You can make whatever you find at your grocery store — or heck, in the back of your fridge and the far reaches of your pantry — FEEL fancy.
To turn that block of cheddar, handful of slivered almonds, and last few spoonfuls of strawberry jam from that jar you sort of forgot was back there into something that feels decadent, you’re going to need some tools. As an artist chooses whether to paint on canvas or paper or board, your first big decision is your foundation. Do you like a classic wood board that looks like it’s seen a cheese or two in its time? This shop keeps an incredible selection of old boards, including some very reasonable ones made from reclaimed French cheese drying boards. And everyone loves a reclaimed French cheese drying board, am I right? Etsy has about eight billion ‘60s and ‘70s wood and tile cheese plates floating around (like for example this one, the sale of which buys my spoiled dog the fancy treats!), so if that’s what you like I’d poke around and find one that’s exactly yours — as for me I’m especially fond of this colorful graphic one that still has its cloche, or this more muted round one.
If something ceramic is more your style, I obviously love anything that has a picture representing the thing you’re supposed to put on or in it, and this French ceramic board covered in pictures of cheese sure hits that spot. You can put the cheese! On top of the picture of the cheese!!! Or an app tray with dividers can help get all your tasty treats organized - like this one in some fun orange and yellow florals. If you’d like a ceramic cheese plate that I would have made fun of my mom for loving in the ‘90s, try some Polish pottery! (Do I regret my jerk teen self making fun of my mom’s love of Polish pottery? Yes, sure. Do I regret it as much as I regret making fun of her for loving Lyle Lovett NO OF COURSE NOT. I’m sorry, mom. I’M SO SORRY, LYLE.) I love a generous tray for a cheese plate, and it’s hard to go wrong with some fun graphic Couroc or Worcester Ware (look at those colors!!!), and this big bold sunflower absolutely calls my name. But I saved my two favorites for last. If I were buying a cheese plate today, it would be either this incredible round board set on top of brass antlers, or this colorful Art Deco glass beauty. Someone buy them, please, before I break and do it myself!
So now we’ve got a base, and it’s time to pile it high! You’ve got cheese, of course, and nuts and fruits and crudite and perhaps charcuterie if that’s your thing. All of that you can just stack pleasingly onto your board so it fills every nook and cranny. But if you toss your jams and pickles and honeys and olives and mustards straight onto the board, this will all end in sticky, briny tears. We need wee containers! We need them now! Lots of little things will do this job marvelously - pinch bowls, egg cups, small liqueur or shot glasses, tiny mason jars you saved from jams. But if you don’t have enough of those there are some very sweet little condiment containers out there, and as it turns out most of my favorites are shaped like fruits. Just look at these adorable little jars! Don’t you absolutely need to fill them with jams? Or for a teak play on the same very cute theme, here’s a wooden trio. Don’t want it shaped like a fruit? What if we just stuck a fruit on it? Or maybe a whole bunch of fruits? If you hate fruit and joy, I guess I also like these little flower bowls. I guess. A long skinny olive tray can be a great way to break up a big board. I’m partial to this pretty green pressed glass, but there are lots of sweet china options as well. And for something handmade I love the lines of these handled wood olive trays, or the graphic look of these ceramics.
If your grocery store and a good dig around in your pantry didn’t give you enough good ideas for how you can fill all your little bowls and jars and tiny trays, maybe you want to make something yourself. Apparently my main stress reaction is canning and preserving, so that’s of course how I spent most of 2020. And so I present to you my top three things I shoved into little jars this summer to enjoy on future cheese plates! This balsamic fig and walnut conserve is INCREDIBLE with goat cheese, and the extra pickling liquid makes a great salad dressing. For an unusual jam you can make outside of fresh fruit season, hibiscus jam packs a nice tart/sweet punch that holds up to the smelliest of cheeses. And finally, the preserving queen at Food in Jars has a great recipe for pickled cherries that are not only delicious with a mild semi-soft cheese, but also a wild color if you need to add something bright to your plate.
And now your cheese plate is ready! We just need to get those tasty treats off that bountiful board and into your face! Part of the joy of filling up tiny condiment containers is that you then need little bitty spoons, and I would love to serve my neon cherries with these sweet pottery spoons or this set of pretty pewter twig spoons. Grab a tiny jar of wooden knives to spread your goat cheese and a handful of little brass forks to spear your pickles and you’re all set! Or get cute with a toothpick hedgehog or a snail full of skewers, nobody here’s going to stop you.
Your guests (this is an imagined future where we have guests, what fun!) will of course need a way to transport their goodies so that everyone isn’t just hovering over your beautiful cheese board — although let’s be honest they’re going to do that anyway. But just in case, we’d better look at some hors d'oeuvres plates. And what better way to eat cheeses than off these fabulous vintage cheese label plates? Like the general idea but want a little more kitsch? These show you what animals and people made your French cheese AND feature hilariously large cheese wheels and knives, two of my favorite hilariously large things. For something a little less French, these Soviet appetizer plates have enough herring and hardboiled egg to supplement anyone’s cheese choices. If you’d prefer something a little less representative, how about a graphic midcentury option, something in a funky ‘70s paisley, or these delightful ceramic leaf plates with a matching appetizer tray? For handmade goods, I’m a huge fan of the graphic animals prints from this potter, and they come in a variety of shapes and colors.
And now it’s time to put our leftover cheeses away for another day’s snack, which brings me to my absolute favorite Cheese Accessory. A covered cheese dish is going to take your refrigerator to the next level, my friends. If I could get away with it, my fridge would be full of little china cheese dishes and absolutely nothing else. Are they a waste of space and a danger to break at any moment? Oh absolutely. Does that stop me from loving them with my whole heart? You know it does not. Mine helpfully says “CHEESE” on top, which is useful if you don’t remember what a cheese dish is for. I love the aggressively floral Victorian china dishes, in either a wedge or a nice round. If you like your Victorian cheese cover a little less fussy, how about this big Ironstone fella covered in fruits? Or for MORE fussy, a lovely lady in her hoop skirt. For something a little less Victorian, there are some nice pottery options out there, or how about a bright yellow floral with a little kitschy kick?
I heard from a few of you who brought something new into their homes based on last week’s deep dive into candle holders and still lifes, and nothing brings me more joy than something old or something homemade finding its place in the world. Go forth, friends, and get ready for that glorious future when we can once again invite people into our homes and fill them up to the brim with cheese! I, for one, can’t wait.
With love from the Witch House,
Laura