The recipes for accompaniments are intended to be simple and easy to prepare. All of them can be made in advance so you can focus on making dinner or rushing home in traffic, knowing that plating your cheese platter will take only a few minutes. You can certainly make some of the recipes right before serving, but it’s probably easier to have them prepared before assembling your cheese plate.
All the recipes indicate how long they should take to make. If you’ve got very little time to spare, don’t choose a recipe that takes hours to prepare. If you can spare the extra few minutes, though, many of the more time-consuming recipes are really special.
Read each recipe from beginning to end a couple of times before proceeding to make it. This will set you up for success every time, ensuring that you don’t forget any important steps or ingredients. Have a piece of paper ready to jot down notes for yourself, or, if doing so doesn’t offend your sensibilities, write in your cookbook with pencil so you can make changes or notations that suit you.
These recipes are written the way they are for a reason. The order in which the ingredients are listed is the order in which you will use them in the directions.
Many of the ingredients in the recipes are flexible. We recommend making the recipes as written once so that you understand the process and the end result. Then, the next time, make them with a twist, if you wish.
There are occasions when you don’t have any time to cook. That’s OK. Use our pairing suggestions as inspiration, then go to a good specialty food store, cheese shop, or grocery store, and buy quality retail products. There are dozens of jams, chutneys, fruit curds, nut brittles, roasted nuts, pickles, honeys, and mustards available in stores.
When you have the time, though, you can create something extra special and have fun doing it. Really, most of our recipes will ultimately save you time because you will be making items that will serve other purposes—a pesto that goes on your cheese plate will later be used on pasta; mustards and pickles will be reused on sandwiches; brittle will be crumbled onto ice cream sundaes.
Many of the cheeses that we highlight in this book are made in very small quantities and are not widely distributed, so you may not be able to buy all of them at your local cheese shop or market. In those cases we usually recommend more widely available substitutes. In case you are unable to find the substitutes, we give you a brief description of each cheese so that you can ask your favorite cheesemonger for a good alternative in the same style.
Have fun!
—Leigh Friend, New York City, 2016
