I love making cheese plates. I love trying new, fun ingredients and weird cheeses and fancy meats. I like arranging them on a tray or a wood cutting board. I love neat piles of olives and curated rivers of prosciutto running down the middle. I love a tiny tiny ramekin of local honey to drizzle over every bite. I’ve gotten very good at the art of the cheese plate and haven’t been able to share that in a while, since the world is the way it is. WHAT’S THE POINT WITH NO ONE TO IMPRESS. But sometimes it’s nice not to have cereal for dinner again. Even with no one to show off too, I can still make cheese plates. Just on a smaller scale. Cheese plate for one.
Perfect size for a snack for two or a meal for one. Most grocery stores with a specialty cheese section have a little basket in there of tiny leftover chunks of cheese. They’re the perfect size for a cheese plate for one and usually pretty affordable. The cheeses I used were all around $3 each.
For cheese plates I usually do at least one hard cheese and one soft cheese. Then I add some other fun stuff, like cured meats, olives, nuts, jams, pickles, etc. Kind of just whatever I have around. This one has salami, prosciutto, olives, and apple slices. The cheeses are a smoked gouda, a manchego, and some brie-style thing. Then I grabbed a demi baguette to go with it.
It may seem silly to spend time arranging your food nicely on a plate when you could just eat box mac and cheese straight from the pot, but every now and then it’s nice to treat yourself to something a little ~fancy~. Make yourself a cheese plate, pour yourself a glass of wine, put on your favorite trash tv show and know that you’re worth it.