How to assemble the perfect Christmas cheeseboard to impress your guests
A To Put Together? Good How Cheeseboard
Whenever I select cheeses for my festive cheese board, I recall this quote from the kings of Irish cheesemongers, Kevin and Seamus Sheridan: “Genuine farmhouse cheese is one of the few products where the link between real people and real places is intricate to its value. It allows us to taste, to eat and to share food, to be a part of a process, the last link in a long chain. The full pleasure built into the atoms of the cheese carries the story of the fields, the animals, the hand and the history that brought it to our mouths. To share in this is a real pleasure.” Counter Culture. The Sheridans Guide to Cheese.
From just one main ingredient, milk, a little rennet and a fair amount of time, come so many different expressions of cheese each with their own personality. The foods we select to share with our nearest and dearest should tell a story, and the cheeseboard will always be part of that.
But how to put a good cheeseboard together?
There are two aspects to consider: the cheeses and how to present them.
PRESENTATION
Sharing or Plated?
Do you prefer a sharing cheeseboard, or individual selections? Sharing platters, particularly large slate boards or plates, mean you can write the name of the cheese in chalk, with the milk type, style and where it’s made. Individual plates allow for careful tasting by a guest and spark conversations about who likes what best.
Colour
Cheese can be surprisingly colourful — blues, smoked, bloomed or ash rinds. Slate makes cheeses pop against a dark background, and colour can be added with fruits and chutneys.
Fruits and Chutneys
Fruit refreshes the palate between strong flavours and different textures. The classic accompaniment is grapes, but if your cheeses are local why not keep your fruits local, too? Fresh pear and apple are fantastic palate cleansers. I love fresh figs too which are great with soft tart cheeses like goat’s.
Country Choice in Co Tipperary make incredible glacé pears which are a game changer served with blue cheese, but I avoid other dried or candied fruits as they can be too sweet.
Chutneys and pickles can bring a cheese to life but choose well. Too sharp with vinegar or too sweet with sugar and it can dull the flavour of your carefully selected cheeses. I think it’s hard to beat a well-made piccalilli, the kind of thing you’d find at a Country Women’s Association farm shop.
Bread or Crackers
You need something to carry the cheese to your mouth! It’s hard to go wrong with the Sheridan’s Brown Bread Crackers, but I also like their linseed and rye cracker for an extra nutty flavour. Blue cheese on Christmas plum pudding is a hack shared with me by restaurateur and chef Claire Nash, formerly of Nash19 in Cork. Take Graham Herterich’s advice and experiment with his idea for “dressed brack” from his book, Bake.
THE CHEESES
Time to get down to the business of selecting your cheeses, how many and what kind.
Things to Consider…
Cheese can be made with cows’, sheep’s or goats’ milk and each carries flavours in their own ways. Cow milk tends to be creamier and milder, sheep milk cheese can be more robust, and goat milk super creamy with a hint of “barnyard” which is not as off putting as it sounds!
Cheese can be raw (unpasteurised) and pasteurised, clearly stated on the pack. Raw cheeses need a little more careful handling and should be avoided by some people (e.g. pregnant women), but otherwise raw cheeses are glorious.
Rinds will always carry flavour but are mostly a maturation technique that determines the final character of the cheese a maker wants to create.
A cheese can be fresh with no rind (e.g. creamy goats cheeses, mozzarella, burrata), washed (e.g. Durrus, Milleens), smoked (coated in wax to keep the smoke flavour in, but not always), bloomed (moulds encouraged on the outside so they look furry), ash coated (real ash, edible), rolled in herbs (for added flavour), or hard rind (e.g. cheddar).
Create an Irish 6-cheese board
Selecting six cheeses helps to curate that food story the Sheridan’s talk about. Tasting is about texture as much as flavour, from hard to soft, mild to strong.
Coolea Extra Matured, Co Cork
Tangy with redolent salty crystals and a slight crumble with very present notes of butterscotch, this 18-month matured cheese has always been my favourite!
A gouda-style cheese made with pasteurised cow’s milk is the perfect way to set the tastebuds tingling. It’s one of the pioneering West Cork cheeses that restarted farmhouse cheese making back in the 70s.
If you like that try this: Hegarty’s Cheddar matured for a year bound in cheesecloth.
Cais na Tire, Co Tipperary
A hard sheep’s cheese matured for up to nine months. Pure colour with melting, buttery notes of nutty caramel sweetness. This cheese keeps winning awards and is a firm favourite with chefs as an Irish alternative to Parmesan.
If you like that try this: Rockfield Cheese, a hard-rind sheep’s milk cheese aged for 12 weeks from the makers of Velvet Cloud yogurt in Co Mayo.
Gubbeen Smoked, Co Cork
This smoked version of Gubbeen Cheese is a family partnership: dad milks the cows; mum makes the cheese, and son smokes it in their smokehouse! The Ferguson family are icons in the world of artisan food, and this semi-soft washed rind cheese is gently oak-smoked, sealed with breathable black wax and imparts a gorgeous wood-smoke aroma to the cheeseboard.
If you like that try this: Knockanore Raw Milk Smoked Cheese is smoked gently over oak smoked for 10 days imbuing it with an amber coloured exterior.
Durrus Óg, Co Cork
I do love a cheese you can smell before you see it! A little Durrus Óg goes a long way — less is definitely more. A young soft-rind cheese just ten days old with an orangey-pink bloomy rind is a pungent cheese much milder on the palate than it is the olfactory senses. A beautifully creamy cheese that’s all about the milk. Liable to creep off the plate.
If you like that try this: Milleens is a young soft washed rind cheese also with an orangey bloom with a nutty mushroom-y flavour that’s an absolute classic.
Crozier Blue, Co Tipperary
Made by the Grubb family who are famous for their Cashel Blue, this is their sheep’s milk cheese made from early summer milk and matured for minimum six months for an umami laden creamy cheese that matches the might of the mould. This year’s vintage is particularly good, but as with all Irish sheep’s cheese not much is made, making it an extra special edition on your Christmas cheese board.
If you like that try this: Blue cheese is one of my favourites so I’m breaking all the rules and suggesting two others both from the north! Young Buck by Mike’s Fancy Cheese (Belfast) is a raw cow’s milk blue that is consistently spectacular. Sperrin Blue by Dart Mountain (Co Derry) is a semi-hard washed rind blue handmade in small batches, one of my firm favourites.
St Tola Ash, Co Clare
Raw milk fresh goats’ cheese from one of Ireland’s iconic cheesemakers, Siobhán Ní Gháirbhith, rolled in ash to slow down the maturation process keeping the floral flavours of the cheese vibrant and clear. The colour contrast with the dark moody exterior to the crystalline white interior is always a showstopper.
If you like that try this: Dingle Goats Cheese may not have the drama of the two-tone reveal, but this luxurious soft goat’s cheese, handmade by Angela O’Hanlon from milk from her own small goat herd, is consistently winning over foodies for its double cream-like texture.