How To Make Your Own Cheese Platter & feature fruit
Whether you’re entertaining one special guest on a date night or preparing for a crowd, arming yourself with the knowledge of how to make your own cheese platter is a sure way to impress. A glass of wine, some fruit, good company, and a balanced selection of cheese and fresh fruit is a recipe for an excellent evening!
Begin with Cheese
Navigating the cheese section can be daunting but once you break it down, it’s quite simple! Begin with three to four cheeses and include a variety such as an aged cheese, soft cheese, hard cheese, then blue.
Aged cheeses could be something like Gouda, Havarti, or a classic Cheddar. Soft cheese could include any of the white rind cheeses like Brie or Camembert. Other soft cheeses like Munster or goat cheese would also work beautifully. Hard cheeses like Parmesan, Gruyere or Romano bring more robust flavours to the board while blue cheeses like Gorgonzola, Stilton, or Roquefort add bold flavour.
Arrange your cheeses in a clockwise direction from mild flavour to strong, and don’t forget to provide toothpicks or a cheese knife for each.
Balance and Enhance with Fruits from Chile
A proper cheeseboard must have lots of fresh flavours to cut through the richness of the cheese, and also to provide variety and interest on the board. Typical accompaniments include fresh grapes—both red and green grapes work well. You could also add fresh blueberries. These little bites of sweetness go so well with cheese!
In addition to these bite sized fruits, we recommend you try something unexpected for added interest. For instance, sliced stone fruits like plums, peaches or nectarines would make a surprisingly delicious addition to your cheese board! Plums go well with soft cheeses like goat cheese and Brie would present plums with a creamy platform on which to shine. Fresh fruit also balances bold and pungent flavours from the stronger cheeses like parmesan and blue. Any variety of plum adds a different dimension of flavour, but in our video we used some beautiful red and black plums.
In addition to fresh fruit, a spread or compote is another welcome addition. Try our beautiful plum compote to spread over your favourite cheeses—its mellow sweetness with plum and lemon notes are a perfect accoutrement.
Savoury Bites and a Crunch
Of course you need some crackers to be your vehicle for cheese and fruit! Be sure to add a variety—rice crackers, water crackers, hearty seeded crackers and your classic round, multigrain crackers are all good choices. You could also include crisp, toasted baguettes to enjoy as well!
Additional components are optional and help to round out the display. Add savoury treats like nuts, preserves and pickles for those who don’t have a sweet tooth.
