On Saturday evening, we had a few friends over.
I got it in my head that I wanted to make a tricked out cheeseboard for our guests. At the end of the day, I could sit and eat only cheese at a party, forgoing all other eats.
Is that weird?
Though I adore these cute little reusable flags, which I've used in cheeseboards of yore...
this time, I didn't want to serve giant hunks of cheese. And no hunks = nowhere to put the flags. So I had an idea to cover a wooden cutting board with {slightly crumpled and then smoothed} parchment paper, set everything up how I liked, and then simply write on the parchment. I used a fine tip pen for this so that it wouldn't smudge or run onto the food (ack). The result was incredibly subtle, but sophisticated and sweet. I need to hunt down some better parchment-writing implements so that it's easier to read, but as Shaun pointed out, it was nice that the identifiers weren't the star of the platter, but were there in case anyone was interested.
For the cheeses, we served up aged cheddar, goat cheese hand-rolled by Shaun in an herb mixture of parsley, oregano and basil, a strong wedge of blue cheese, and a trio of Spanish cheeses, including drunken goat cheese, iberico and manchego.
We also added some sliced aged brasaola...
some honey (for drizzling on the blue cheese)
and some pickled beets.
Paired with a tall glass of red wine and it doesn't really get much better than that!
I really loved this idea and looked so pretty on the table. I can't wait to come up with some other ideas for future boards, like additional cheeses, fig jam and maybe some fruit, like apple slices or grapes.
So that's how I dolled up a basic cheeseboard. There's something so rustic about adding the crumpled parchment and I'm loving the fact that I can simply write directly on it so guests know exactly what they are getting!
Questions of the Day:
How did you spend your weekend?
What's your favorite thing on a cheeseboard?