Dan's Papers - August 3, 2007

We start our meals with an appetizer - usually a salad or a soup. Sometimes we get a tuna tar tar or a plate of steamed vegetables. We follow that with our main course - steak, chicken, pasta, fish. After our main course, we conclude the meal with a fantastic dessert, maybe a piece of cake, maybe ice cream, maybe we even go on the healthier side and have a fruit salad. If we really want to stay on the healthy side, we can drop dessert all together, but that would only force the meal to lose its consistency and fulfilling nature, unless you replace your dessert with a cheese platter.

Cheese platters are customarily eaten before a meal, as an appetizer, or after a meal as a dessert. Since we overlook the wonderful effects it can have as a dessert, we usually see cheese platters served as hors d'oeuvres. However, with a combination of sweet sensation, bitter deliciousness and salty amazement, a cheese platter can serve as a perfect and healthy dessert.

Here are a few pieces of advice to make your cheese platter even better:

1) You can organize your cheeses to all have similar consistencies on the plate. Some people choose to have an "all soft-cheese platter," containing cheeses such as Brie and Camembert. Some people choose to have an "all medium-cheese platter or an "all hard-cheese platter" such as Old Amsterdam or Havarti. Although a homogenous array of cheeses can be a great theme, a cheese platter, however, can also be great with a mixture of different categories of cheeses.

2) You can organize your cheeses by the type of milk they are made with. Cheeses can be made with three different types of milk - goat, cow, and sheep. Some people prefer goat cheese to cow cheese or sheep cheese. Therefore, there are many cheese platters, which have the theme of only goat cheese or only cow cheese or only sheep cheese. However, although original, these platters are not always preferred for large groups of people. Because the goat cheese tends to be the most pungent and the cow cheese tends to be the least pungent, the tastes do not vary enough.

3) Accompany your cheese platter with an appropriate wine. Certain wines match up well with their respective cheeses, similarly to how they are better with particular fruits. If you are serving a large amount of different kinds of cheeses, one type of wine usually will not do the trick. You can find out more about which wines match up with which cheeses best at www.artisinalcheese.com or try it out on your own.

4) Make sure that the cheeses are spaced evenly on the plate. If you do not allow enough room between them, they will be harder to cut. Also, the runny cheeses may smear over the other ones on the plate, contaminating them with a foreign type of cheese and changing the taste.

5) Border the cheese plate with different types of fruit. If you have an all soft-cheese platter, then softer fruits such as strawberries, green grapes, red grapes, figs, dates and blueberries may work best with your plate. If you have an all hard-cheese platter, then harder fruits such as peaches, nectarines, tangerines, oranges, plums and Clementines may be a better complement to your cheese. If you have a combination of cheeses with different consistencies, you can base your fruit choice off taste. If the cheeses are stronger, you may want to use a sweeter fruit, such as strawberries, dates or figs and if the cheeses are weaker, you may want to use a more sour or bitter fruit, like blueberries or grapes.

6) Finally, for a great cheese platter, do not simply use water crackers. Although cheese with water crackers is good, it can get boring and tiresome. Try using other types of cracker or a baguette. Cut the baguette into thin pieces and serve it with the cheese. In a large group, the baguette will go before the crackers. I can guarantee that.

A few different cheeses, some wine, some fruit and an open and creative mind is all that is necessary to prepare the perfect cheese platter.