How to Make and Serve a Cheese Plate

Instructions

1. Transcript: Make and Serve a Cheese Plate Hi, I\'m Chef John Mitzewich for About.com. Today I\'m going to show you how to put together a basic cheese plate. These are a lot of fun to put together, great for entertaining, and really easy! So let get started.

2. Add Goat\'s Milk Cheese to the Plate We\'re going to do a three-cheese plate. The first cheese is going to be a goat\'s milk cheese, called Humboldt Fog. Goat milk cheese tends to be white or light in color, tangy, and has a rind similar to brie. See that line that goes down the center? That\'s actually vegetable ash and that looks like the fog on the Humboldt coast of California.

3. Add Sheep\'s Milk Cheese to the Plate Our second cheese is called Istara, from France, from the Basque region between Spain and France. It\'s a sheep\'s milk cheese. Its a little darker in color and it has kind of a hard waxy rind. So we\'re going to cut that off on two side. We\'re going to leave the back on for some color. Then we\'re going to cut at a angle just to start it, not too much, just maybe a third.

4. Add Cow\'s Milk Cheese to the Plate Our third cheese is a cow\'s milk cheese, the famous Gruyere - king of the Swiss cheeses. It\'s rich, nutty, full-flavored. A really great cheese. We\'re going to trim the rind on this also. We\'re going to also take a couple slice off this, but we\'ll do cubes instead of slices. When we set this up we\'ll have lots of visual interest.

5. Add Fruit to the Cheese Plate For a platter I like to use a round piece of glass on a grape vine wreath. I think it looks nice to have a little height. Anything will work, of course. We\'re going to use some grapes as a centerpiece. We\'re going to put down the goat cheese, the Humboldt Fog, with the rind facing the grapes for easy access. On goes the Gruyere with the chucks, on goes the Istara with the slices artfully unarranged.

6. Garnish the Cheese Plate Then we\'re going to put some garnishes on here. Dried fruit and nuts are very traditional. Here are some dried dates. This is called Membrillo, which is a quince paste. It always sold near the cheese at a cheese shop. It\'s kind of a sweet, sour, floral flavor - really beautiful with cheese. We\'re also going to put on some almonds. Any kind of dried fruit and nuts work great - this is just to break up the plate and cleanse the palette as people taste the cheese.

7. Cheese Plate Utensils For serving utensils, any flat cheese or butter knife will work for the soft cheeses, like the goat cheese, but for the firmer cheese I recommend on of these cheese knives that slice and stab.

8. Serving the Cheese Platter If you are going to serve bread and crackers use something neutral, these are called water crackers, you don\'t want to get in the way of the flavor of the cheese. You also want to leave the cheese out at room temp so the cheese is not cold. You\'ll have a much better flavor. Three cheeses are the perfect amount - try to get one of each milk for variety. Get creative with your garnishes using any fruits and nuts.

9. Other than that, have a lot of fun putting these together. I hope you give it a try. Enjoy!