If you are in any way connecting with the civilized world during the holidays, you are bound to be spending more money than usual. Holiday gifts for the kids, the folks, the partners, the friends, the office mates, the in-laws, the cousins, the grandparents… oh and the guy who shoveled your walk last winter during that crazy snow storm that you have been meaning to thank all year!
Then there are the dinners out with colleagues, clients, friends, family and your second-grade teacher you take out every year for high tea. Don’t forget about those hostess bottles of wine and rum that need to be accompanied with your presence to the office holiday party, your cousin’s ugly sweater contest, your in-laws family gathering, your parents' holiday party, your sister’s Christmas Eve party, your best friend's New Year's Eve party and of course your own New Year's Day brunch in which you need to foot the bill for the entire shebang!
It is no surprise many people just hide from the holiday season, overwhelmed with the financial pressure alone. Of course, it isn’t just the financial strain but the time commitment. It can be incredibly stressful to try and show up as your best self to absolutely everything!
My humble cheese board blog is likely not going to make a significant difference in the scheme of things but I was really excited about the idea I came up with for a different kind of cheese board, one that saves both money and time. I served this style of cheese board to my guests recently and as I did so, I made a proclamation, “This is a cheese board like you have never experienced before!” Certainly, someone in the history of time has done a cheese board like I’m suggesting, but I have never had one, I have never seen one, and my guests had never experienced anything like this either.
We were entertained for over an hour, we laughed, we delighted in the tastes we were experiencing, and we learned a lot. You see this isn’t just a cheese board, it is a time saving, money saving, entertaining and interactive cheese board. It might take you an hour or so of planning and rummaging through your cabinets, but once you identify the items you have lying around, putting the cheese tray together will take maybe ten minutes. Think about this, the second time you make this cheese board, if you use essentially use the same ingredients, you could put this together in even less time.
Let’s break these bold cheese board proclamations down:
- It costs $30.
- It's educational.
- It's interactive.
- It can be prepared in as little as ten minutes.
Costs $30
This might be a little misleading because I am suggesting you rummage through your cabinets and utilize ingredients you already have at home. Clearly you had to pay for these items at one point but in my experience you are probably looking for ways to use the spice blend you bought on vacation and simply don’t know what to do with. Or, you have a bottle of sweet soy sauce you purchased for a recipe you made one time which you can no longer remember. Or, you have 15 kinds of mustards because your partner can’t resist buying mustard everywhere they go. Then there is, of course, the 4 bottles of capers you have in your pantry because every time you go to the store you can’t remember if you have any, so you buy another jar just in case. If any of these assertions ring true, I think you might agree it is fair to say the true cost of this cheese tray is the cheese itself.
Of course, the price will vary depending on the cheese you choose and the size of the cheese you buy. If you are having an intimate gathering of 4 to 8, I believe a really amazing piece of cheese for 30 or under is good benchmark. If you are having 20 or more people over for a cocktail party you may need to spend $100 or more on one giant piece of cheese, but how cool is that? One giant sexy piece of amazing cheese plopped down on a giant cutting board surrounded by unusual ingredients and everyday ingredients. Now that will get people’s attention!
Selecting Cheese
I live in a small remote town with no gourmet cheese shop closer than a 45 minute drive one way. That is a long haul to get piece of cheese. Of course, you can go to your local grocery store and grab a pretty good piece of sharp cheddar, so if you are on a really tight budget, go for it. If you know nothing about cheese, I will give you a bit of advice to identify a really good piece of cheese. This isn’t always 100% true, but if the cheese is already cut and packaged in a Cryovac package, it isn’t top shelf cheese. Cheese looses a tremendous amount of flavor once it is cut and/or grated so good cheese from good cheese mongers is typically cut freshly and packaged to order.
Whole Foods is probably the largest available good cheese monger. Hopefully you are lucky enough to have a great cheese shop near and if not, I like to order from Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor (they cut and package each piece of cheese to order). I could write a whole blog on how much I love Zingerman’s but this is not that blog. Shipping can be expensive, but Zingerman’s knows their stuff and their cheese is the kind of show stopping cheese I’m suggesting for this cheese tray.
You may be asking what kind of cheese should I use? I think it might depend on your crowd and the size of the gathering. In a smaller gathering where you are sitting down with one another you could use any type of cheese you like. In a larger gathering where people are moving around more, a cheese that can be sliced would be easier for guests to enjoy, a crumbly cheese is hard to eat walking around. A more sliceable cheese can be eaten with your hands so if you don’t have a bunch of forks this is helpful too. A more neutral cheese will be more of a vehicle for the condiments than a more assertive cheese but both can offer interesting and contrary insights.
Educational
We have a class called Flavor Dynamics, and we have been teaching a version of this class for over 20 years. We also teach Flavor Dynamics in our five-day Culinary Boot Camp. The idea is that you learn about how to taste, identify the five flavors (salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami) and how to combine them successfully. If you cannot make it to one of our Flavor Dynamics classes, you can certainly learn a lot of the same points through this cheese board. After trying this at a party, I am pretty sure you will understand how great it would be to have the experience guided by a chef in one of our classes.
What I am suggesting is that you surround your one single, sole piece of cheese with ingredients that represent the five basic flavors. The ingredients can be more conventional if you choose, but my proposal is to use at least some ingredients that you don’t see everyday on a cheese board. Take each ingredient and try a little bit on a piece of cheese and see what happens to the ingredient and what happens to the cheese. It is revelatory!
Have you ever tasted a little bit of unsweetened cocoa powder? It is so bitter it is almost inedible, but once you sprinkle some on your cheese, you will see how bitter interacts with the fat in the cheese… fat neutralizes bitterness! Have you ever put olive oil on cheese, why on earth would you do this? The bitterness in the olive oil is neutralized by the cheese but it also brings out the richness of the cheese.
Here are some suggestions of condiments (a few alcohols that can be served as well) that fall under these categories. It is inevitable that some items overlap, pickles are usually somewhat sweet and sour. Anchovy paste is both salty and umami. I have also included spicy and fatty ingredients, although these are not flavors, they are flavor enhancers and provide excellent fodder for conversation on flavor. I have focused on condiments as a way to represent these flavors primarily because most people have them already in their home. Most likely every cheese board you have ever had has pretty much the same ingredients on it: apples, grapes, nuts and crackers are ubiquitous, but they don’t have to be.
Salty
- Sea Salt
- Togarashi
- Miso Paste
- Anchovies
- Tajin or other Salted Spice Blends
- Soy Sauce
- Fish Sauce
- Worcestershire Sauce
- Sweet Soy Sauce
Sweet
- Honey
- Mirin
- Teriyaki Sauce
- Canned Fruit
- Natural Sweeteners (Molasses, Malt, Agave Nectar, Treacle, Maple Syrup)
- Dessert Wines or Cordials like Coffee, Almond, Raspberry or Orange Liquor
Sour
- Pickles (anything pickled will do)
- Crème of Balsamic
- Pomegranate Molasses
- Pickled Ginger
- Citrus
- White wine with more acidity like Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio or white wine Vermouth
Bitter
- Citrus Peel or Dried Citrus
- Mustard or Mustard Seeds
- Ground Ginger
- Chocolate of any kind
- Orange
- Walnut
- Any type of Bitters, Amaro or some Red Wine have a good amount of bitterness to them
Umami
I describe Umami as “of the earth” meat, mushrooms, bread, tomatoes, cheese, seaweed, soy are great examples.
The cheese itself is an Umami bomb but what happens when you combine umami with umami? Some of the other ingredients listed will represent umami as well… anchovy, olive oil, butter, soy sauce and miso.
Fat
- Mayonnaise or Aioli
- Olive Oil
- Lime or other Flavored Oils
- Pumpkin Seed or other Nut Oils
- Chili Oil
- Tahini
- Butter
- Anchovy Paste
Spicy
- Cajun Spice
- Chili Crisp
- Pepper Jelly
- Giardiniera
- Hot Sauces
- Dried or Canned Chilies
Interactive
I think by this point you can see how interactive this cheese board can be. You may have guests who have never really thought about the taste of what they are putting in their mouth beyond “I like it or I don’t like it.” Imagine how cool it may be for that person to open up their mind and taste buds to flavor in a new way. Your foodie guests will clearly be all over this fun and educational experience.
You could also make tasting notes - you certainly don’t have to, but it would encourage participation of your guests. Simply list the condiments you chose, the flavor profile they represent and the type of cheese on a piece of paper and leave a little room for them to make notes. If you are concerned and think Uncle Bill will just be brooding in the corner about the lack of crackers and salami and you don’t want to deal with it, of course, serve crackers. Make sure the crackers are plain so the cheese and condiments are the only flavors your guests are tasting. Having people take notes formalizes the process and might be helpful in keeping a larger gathering engaged. I find everyone wants to share what their favorite flavors and combinations are so this helps them remember their favorites.
Time Savings
Once you figure out what condiments and items you want to feature with your cheese, the work is primarily done. Know your crowd, maybe they are really adventurous… let your board reflect that with more exotic condiments. Perhaps your crowd isn’t very food adventurous, make sure to include items that are more familiar them alongside a few new ones. Thinking about what to include may be the most time-consuming part of the process. Make a list of what you have and then you can think about what condiments you want to include anytime, in the car on the way to work or while you are working out, you don’t need to be in the kitchen the whole time. Take an inventory of your pantry and classify what flavors they represent, remember many will have more than one flavor. All you have to do is score yourself some yummy cheese and put it on a nice wood chopping block and surround it with the condiments. Bam, you’re done.
Finer Points
I should mention that one of the reasons I suggest condiments is because they are already in a container. Most people don’t have a million small dishes and little tasting spoons to put out. The bottles themselves provide a lot of interest to the tray, different sizes, shapes and colors do a lot to make the tray interesting if you don’t have all the cute little dishes. Just make sure the labels are clean, well intact and that there is enough of the condiment in the jar to look appetizing. An old bottle of crusty ketchup isn’t going to cut it.
If you would prefer to put your condiments into containers, you can get some relatively inexpensive ramekins and disposable tasting spoons on Amazon.
Remember, if you take the condiments out of the jar you will need to let your guests know what is in the dishes either by labeling them or telling them.
You can go crazy with condiments as far as I am concerned, just make sure you are representing the five flavors and make sure to group the flavors together: sweet, salty, sour, bitter are easier to identify when they are grouped together.
Make sure that you can still see the cheese and that people can reach the cheese on the platter.
So, how much cheese do you need? I would say at least 2 ounces per person. You need to know your crowd, however. I was at a dinner party recently and one of the guests walked up to the one piece of lovely cheese the host set out and literally cut the whole piece in half and ate the entire half of the piece of the cheese on a cracker, it was probably a 4-ounce piece of cheese in one bite. My brother Brian would eat 8 ounces of cheese as an appetizer before eating another pound of it. You might be in a little bit of trouble with this type of guest with my 2-ounce rule, but I think if this is an appetizer type event and this is all you are serving you may want to up it to 3 or 4 ounces per person. If this is before dinner or served with other items, 2 ounces should be perfect. You can also purchase multiple pieces of the same cheese and put them out one at a time so the cheese looks fresh throughout the course of a larger party.
Our Flavor Dynamics class is next being offered on Saturday, February 24 at 12pm. Don't miss this interactive experience that will put your taste buds to the test!
