"A Little Fermented Curd Will Do The Trick"

Whenever my mom has guests over she makes a cheese platter. Her cheese platters usually include a variety of cheeses, crackers and fruit. My favourite is when she puts prosciutto out with the cheese. Prosciutto is a dry-cured ham, sliced paper thin. If my mom has a cheese plate out, I will sneak into the living room and devour as much as I can. Let's face it, I LOVE cheese.

The Betty Crocker Cookbook has an interesting chapter on entertaining. The first section of this chapter is on the entertaining basics like, setting the dining table, setting a buffet table, creating a cheese tray and menus to celebrate (p. 259-260).

In honour of my mom who is a great entertainer (her dinner parties rock), I am learning about cheese and how to serve it. The information Betty Crocker gives is helpful. The book has pictures of different types of cheese and a description of many types.

What are the right cheeses to use when creating a cheese tray?

I already know that my favourite cheese is Brie. Brie is rich and buttery. It's soft and easy to spread on crackers or baguette. If it was up to me, I would just serve Brie but I know that I need to have a variety. So my mom and I went to the best little cheese shop in our hood. FIELD TRIP!!!

Charelli's Cheese Shop & Delicatessen 

Cheese

More cheese

Carmen Lassooij is the owner of Charelli's. I asked her to recommend some cheese that would be nice to put on a cheese tray. She recommended a variety of soft and hard cheese. First I got to taste test some of her selections. The first one that I tried was a mild, hard cheese. I loved that one. I did love the Brie however I discovered that I don't need it to be extra creamy. I think that I need to go back and try some more varieties of Brie. Carmen said that they had four types of Brie in her shop. 

Carmen gave me six different cheeses to try.

I selected four different cheeses for my cheese platter:
Humboldt Fog (goat)
Apricot Stilton (cow)
Mandog Sheep
Chateau de Bourgogne (my favourite)

Charelli's Cracker Selection

Carmen helped me select two types of crackers. I picked one type that will let the cheese do the talking. It is a crispy thin sesame cracker. I also picked a fig, olive cracker that compliments the cheeses that I selected. 

My Charelli's purchase

My cheese platter presentation. 

This is the platter that I've put together for my class. I hope they enjoy it. 

Thank you to Carmen from Charelli's Cheese shop and Delicatessen. If you love cheese like I do, you must visit a cheese shop near you. I also did a little research by watching the Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch. 

Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch

So I think that I'm ready to rate the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I'm finished reading it but I'm definitely not finished trying out some of the recipes. I give this book a 4 star out of 5. I think that the book has a lot of great information and pictures but I still needed to ask for help. I don't like the feel and the weight of the paper. The pages are very hard to turn. The recipes are basic which is great for a beginner cook like me. 

What's your favourite kind of cheese? If you were to put a cheese tray out for your favourite people, what would you chose?