How to make a cheese platter for a party?

Let’s start with the obvious! The choice of cheeses. The golden rule: enjoy and please yourself. However, in order to offer a complete cheese platter, there is another rule: the family rule. To compose a great cheese platter, we recommend you to represent several cheese families:

1. Fresh cheese
2. Bloomy-rind cheeses: camembert, chaource…
3. Washed-rind cheeses: époisses, pont l’évêque…
4. Pressed and non-cooked cheeses or ‘semi-hard cheeses’: reblochon, gouda, Monterey Jack…
5. Pressed and cooked cheeses, also known as ‘hard cheeses’ : swiss, cheddar, comté…
6. Blue-veined cheeses: roquefort, fourme d’Ambert, blue cheese…
7. Processed cheese: American cheese, cancoillotte…
8. Goat’s cheese: crottin de Chavignol AOP, Bijou…

For a large cheese platter, you can represent 7 of these families. For a smaller platter, 3 or 5 families will be more than enough.

Simple cheese platter ideas with condiments

Among the condiments that go best with a cheese platter, you’ll find:

• Fruit preserves: figs, citrus fruits, gooseberries
• Dried fruits: walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds
• Honey
• Fruit jellies: fig, black cherry, gooseberry
• Fresh fruits: grapes, apples, figs
• Truffles
• Stewed fruit: slightly spicy mango chutney, apple compote

Which condiments go with which cheeses?

Acidic fruit preserves go very well with washed-rind cheeses, such as Epoisses de Bourgogne (Burgundy) AOP. Dried fruits go wonderfully with fresh or semi-dry goat cheese. Honey is great when paired with a very dry goat cheese. Hot honey will also go perfectly with Mozzarella, for example. As for fruit jellies, it depends on the flavor :

•  fig, the most versatile, it goes well with many cheeses
• dark cherry: ideal with sheep cheese
• red currant: perfect with a baked camembert or semi-dry goat cheese.

Let’s talk about truffles now! A few thin slices of black truffles will go amazingly with a French brie, for example!

Finally, sour cherry preserves are delicious when paired with a mild swiss or a brie.