French cheese plate for dessert

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

We used to eat cheese as an appetizer before serving the main course. However, in the Mediterranean countries (France, Italy and Spain) this product is offered to guests after the meal. When everyone is already full and has a little rest from eating, you can start changing dishes and serve sweet snacks in the form of fruits, jams, as well as a wooden board on which to lay out various refined dairy products. This dessert is called in France - "Cheese plate", however, it should be remembered that in the best houses of Paris, a wooden (marble or granite) plate is still served.

You need to responsibly approach the choice of such a plate. Cheeses, as a rule, are bought not a week, but a day before the intended meal. Again, you can’t take them out of the refrigerator and immediately serve them on the table: the fermented milk product must warm up to room temperature, otherwise the guests will not enjoy the full taste and aroma. Be sure to think about the design of snacks: the board should be without any decorations, because the main thing here is the cheeses themselves. Nearby you need to put several jams (at least two - sour and sweet, for example, cranberry and fig), a vase of fruit, among which grapes are desirable, a vase withdried fruits or nuts and a separate bread box with crispy chopped baguette. The latter can be replaced with a cracker, but without the added flavor.

What should a cheese plate consist of? Its composition should be varied. It's not about how many types of products you put on it, but that the varieties are combined with each other. In addition, guests should have a choice - someone does not like goat "fromage", and someone does not tolerate blue cheese. The board should please not only the stomach, but also the eye: in tse

ntr put a large piece (you can round Camembert), and smaller ones around the edges.

Even the most meager cheese plate should contain products made from cow, sheep and goat milk. The same applies to the aging of fermented milk products: fresh, soft, semi-soft, hard. However, there is a very strict rule: cheeses are laid out clockwise - from the most tender, cottage cheese varieties to the sharpest and seasoned, piquant. After all, guests are not required to determine by appearance where a product is, otherwise they will immediately understand.

What should the perfect, festive cheese platter contain? The assortment suggests taking “Ricotta” as a fresh curd, supplementing it with aged fresh “Clochette” or “Valensay”. Soft Camembert or Brie, semi-soft cow products, blue or green (Roquefort, Gorgonzola or others), hard ones (Grana Padano, Emmental, Cheddar) are required. In the center, you can put some specific specimen - for example, with herbs, which has an additional taste. To please the adherents of the Russian classics, you can also put the usual variety known from childhood: "Estonian", "Swiss", etc. They should not touch each other, as the tender varieties absorb the scents of the savory species.

The cheese plate should be designed for the number of people eating, otherwise guests will be embarrassed to take pieces. Start from fifty grams per eater. Submit a special knife to the board, at the end of which there are bifurcated cloves. If you do not have such a knife, you can get by with a simple knife and a dessert fork. Cheeses are served with wine, but you can also with cognac. You should start tasting them in the same way as wines - incrementally. If you try the savory variety first, you will find the mild varieties tasteless.