Thursday, January 29, 2009

All-American Cheese Platter--Barefoot Bloggers Bonus Recipe

This month's Barefoot Bloggers optional bonus recipe was selected by the wonderful Rebecca of Ezra Poundcake who referred the most people to the BB site last month. Rather than picking a recipe, Rebecca wanted us to put our creative Ina-skills to use by designing a cheese platter. I do love this idea, but I am so lacking in any food styling and plate arranging skills that stuff like this makes me feel a bit inadequate. I am much more a stick some flowers in a vase, slap the cheese on a plate kind of gal rather than carefully and artfully arranging everything, but since I am a big fan of Rebecca and I have not missed a Barefoot Bloggers' post yet, I knew I had to attempt it. Below in all its glory, I present my "All-American Cheese Platter." 


As you may have noticed, I have been on a bit of a health kick all month but there are not a lot of ways to make a cheese platter much healthier or lower in calories (besides the requisite fruit of course), without resorting to low-fat cheeses. My strategy for this one then became portion control--make the platter and take it over to a friend's house so that others would consume most of it. Also, if I couldn't make it lower in calories or healthier, I could at least make it more "green". In bon appétit magazine's February 2009 special feature,"50 Easy Ways to Eat Green", number 23 is "Eat American Cheese" so I decided to create a platter featuring all cheeses from America. In addition to the cheeses (listed below), I bought apples and pears from Washington, pecans from Georgia and American-made crackers. (No grapes unfortunately as they were all from Chile).  

The cheeses:
  • Surfing Goat Dairy (Maui, Hawaii):  "Swedish Heart":  A goat cheese with caraway seeds, aged 3 months. (I have been to this little artisan dairy and I got to pet the baby goats)

  • Cypress Grove Chevre (Arcata, California): "Truffle Tremor": Goat cheese with truffle, need I say more?

  • Vella Cheese (Sonoma, California): "Mezzo Secco": A partially-dry Monterey Jack cheese, the companies attempt to return to a 1930's style cheese that was made to hold up in warm weather.

  • Whole Foods:  Wisconsin Cheddar Aged Three Years (this was a good quality but no-name cheese however, I needed some color, it is from Wisconsin and it goes so well with apple and pear).


I am sure that Ina (or one of her merry band of friends) would have made a much more Barefoot Contessa-like cheese platter but I think it at least looks appealing and honestly, for my friends, as long as there is good cheese and plenty of it, they are happy! 

My favorite cheese? Being that it is from Hawaii and is seriously delicious cheese, I should say the Surfing Goat but who could resist a creamy chevre with truffle in it? It's tangy but also earthy and decadent and another perfect cheese from Cypress Grove Chevre. Thanks Rebecca for a fun and different pick this week. You can check out the other Barefoot Bloggers' cheese platters at the BB site here.

15 comments:

  1. love cheese these look especially good!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your idea of the All American cheese platter and will try that next time myself. It looks delightful! Mine was not nearly as creative.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, that is an impressive cheese plate. I'm not good with arranging things on a platter. Did you like the goat cheese? My DH hates goat cheese that he had in Paris so I have never been "allowed" to purchase any. I think I might just to sample the taste.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a spread of cheese!! It looks fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Looks great to me! (and not at all like M&Ms..)
    I love goat cheese, lucky you to pat the babies!

    ReplyDelete
  6. The platter looks great - you're too hard on yourself. Impressive record to have done every one of the BB challenges. Part of my 09 plan is to catch up the ones I missed before I joined.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This looks fantastic. I so want to try the Maui goat cheese. Is that a good enough reason to plan a trip soon?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Your cheeses sound really yummy! Nice platter, too.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Our love for cheese goes far and wide! Would love to try a few of these.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks everyone for boosting my plating and arranging self esteem!

    Peggy-I loved both goat cheese, the truffle one was especially good and a creamier. You should sneak some to try! ;-)

    Summer--it is a great reason to plan a trip and I an give you many more reasons on Maui and here too!

    ReplyDelete
  11. My friends and I would tear that platter up! And, you got me. I picked the cheese platter after I read the article in Bon Appetit. I wanted to try the American cheeses.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'll bet when you finished making this platter, stood back and looked at it you were pretty impressed with yourself. You should be - it looks beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Rebecca--It was a great pick and I guess great minds think alike with the American cheeses!

    Giz--thanks! ;-) I was pretty happy with it.

    ReplyDelete

Mahalo for visiting and for leaving a comment. I love reading them and they mean a lot!

All advertising, spam, inappropriate (or just plain rude) comments will be promptly deleted. I do appreciate your right to free speech and to your opinion but I'm not into mean, rude, or mean snarky (non-mean snarky is just fine!) ;-)