The quick and easy Cheese board

Cheese boards can be as fancy as you’d like, but most of the time, my boards are pretty simple. 2-3 meats, 2-3 cheeses, a pile of crackers, and a few handfuls of snack foods that I pull from whatever is stashed in the pantry. 

Recipe for making your own cheese onboard 
https://dreamtimesailourgalley.blogspot.com/p/tips.html

You can pull something together in about 5 minutes or spend half an hour assembling something fancy. I lean towards the quick and simple in pretty much every aspect of life, so I’ll give you one guess how I make a cheese board most of the time.

What you do want is a variety of textures here. With so many brands of cheeses out there, you want to make sure you select one from each of the texture range

Soft: burrata, mozzarella, brie, humboldt fog

Semi-Soft: stilton, roquefort, Gorgonzola, Fontina

Semi-Hard: manchego, Swiss, provolone, comte

Hard: cheddar, parmesan, pecorino, Asiago

THE SIDE KICKS

You can’t forget the accompaniments – they go with the cheese and add a pop of color to your board, creating that “hot mess” look.

Bread/Crackers: baguette, ciabatta, bread sticks, crostini, multigrain crackers, water crackers, parmesan crisps

Fresh fruits: raspberries, strawberries, pear, grapes, olives, cornichon pickles, cherries, apple, fig

Dried fruits: apricots, figs

Nuts: almonds, macadamia, almonds, cashews

Spreads: apricot spread, chutney, honey, quince paste, fig paste

For the meat, my favorite thing to buy is the 3-pack of charcuterie meats. It’s super affordable and gives a great variety without breaking the bank.

Meats: Salomon, Capocollo, prosciutto, salami (there are countless varieties of hard and soft salami that you can try), plain old ham, turkey, and roast beef will work as well. 

And don’t forget your Garnish: with rosemary, thyme, parsley and for Christmas add in a few treats like Ferrero Rocher, Liquorice, and surgery coated Almonds.

Sunny Seed Crackers

Ingredients

1 cup sunflower seeds

3/4 cup pumpkin seeds

1/2 cup chia seeds

1/2 cup sesame seeds

1/4 cup flaxseed

1/4 cup psyllium husks

1 tsp salt.

1 1/2 cups water.

1 tbsp dried herbs of your choice, (I used an Italian mix)

Let’s get Cooking 

Preheat oven to 170C

Mix all ingredients together and leave for 10-15 minutes for the seeds to soak up the water.

Give everything a good stir, then split the mixture over two lined baking trays and spread thinly. The ideal thickness is about 3-4mm. Too thin and the crackers will be very fragile, too thick and they'll be more like a seed cookie than a cracker. Using your pizza wheel cut the crackers into rectangles or squares.

Bake for one hour (switching the trays around halfway through), or until golden brown and crisp. If they don't feel crisp after an hour, return to the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

Turn the oven off but leave the crackers in and allow to cool. Store in an airtight container. 

Fig Paste

Ingredients 

145 g( 1 cup) sesame seeds

200 g walnuts

½ tsp aniseed

½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 tsp pink peppercorns

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

2 cloves, ground (or 1 tsp ground cloves)

2 tbsp petimezi (grape molasses)

250 ml (1 cup) good quality honey (such as Attiki)

125 ml (½ cup) ouzo, plus extra for packing

1½ kg good quality dried Greek figs

fresh fig leaves, washed well and pat dried (or plastic wrap), for wrapping

Let’s get Cooking 

Toast the sesame seeds, walnuts and aniseed one by one in a dry frying pan over low-medium heat. 

Pound the aniseeds in a mortar and pestle until finely ground. 

Add to the sesame seeds and walnuts, along with black pepper, pink peppercorns, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. 

Add the petimezi, honey and ouzo and mix well.

Pulse the dried figs in a food processor until finely chopped – you might need to do this in two batches. 

Add to the seed and spice mixture and mix well by hand to incorporate everything evenly – you might like to wear gloves as the mixture is quite sticky.

There are a few ways to package the fig paste. 

To make one big celebratory round of fig paste, lightly oil a 20 cm round cake tin and line with fresh fig leaves, bottom-side down and leaving the sides overhanging (or plastic wrap if you don’t have fig leaves). 

Using hands lightly dampened with ouzo, firmly pack the paste into the lined tin and fold over the leaves, adding more to cover if necessary. 

Cover the top with baking paper and weigh down with a couple of tins and stand overnight.

To package in smaller portions, take small amounts, and use small ramekins wrap in plastic wrap or squares of muslin lined with baking paper and roll into logs before securing the ends with butcher’s string. Alternatively, to wrap the paste directly in fresh fig leaves, mould the fig paste into balls, flatten them, then wrap them in fresh leaves that have been washed and carefully dried, then tie using butcher’s string.