Ultimate Modern Spring Cheese Platter and Easy Raspberry Spread Recipe

Disclosure: Thank you to Castello Cheese for sponsoring this cheese board challenge post! See details below on how you can win their trip for 2 to Napa Valley. I was just there and trust me...it's awesome. SO ENTER!
 

God bless the concept of a cheese board. A compilation of textures, colors, flavors and of course, CHEESE come together to make the easiest entertaining tool of all time. It's customizable. It's creative. And did I mention it's delicious? There's something for everyone on a cheese board. Especially if you serve it with wine, because that really boosts the entertainment abilities of guests. Or it lowers the bar. It really depends on how much of a bummer your food is (or your guests. You never know). 

Today's post is to show you, in my opinion, the most awesome, modern spring cheese board. When I first styled the images for this, I went traditional and over the top full. There were linens. There was slate. There was A LOT happening. And we photographed it and it was fine by many standards. But we hated it. We try to provide a new look at things here on Healthfully Ever After and we LOVE flavor pairings and seasonality. So we scrapped it and started over (my to-do list oriented soul cried) so you could really see and understand this spring cheese board and a new way to style one. I think it was worth it because really, how often do you see a new take on a cheese board?

organized, geometric, minimalist, food centered, and spring

To start building a cheese board you really need to figure out your angle. For us, it's a focus on that awkward Spring food phase where we have winter produce and the start of some spring things. We are not a California blog so NO, we don't have a bounty of fruit right now! We wanted to show you how you can honestly work with what's out there right now or what most of you could obtain, regardless of where you live. 

From there it's about hitting textures and flavors. In our house we need:

• a starch
• salty
• sweet
• sour/vinegar
• savory/umami
• crunchy
• creamy

We anchored this plate with two cheeses: a Castello Havarti with caraway seeds and a Castello Danish Blue Cheese. Castello has tons of creative cheeses that will help fit any of your themes. For wine we paired it with a Folie á Deux Sonoma county wine (a cabernet sauvignon). I kind of got hooked on Cab Sav after going to Napa a few weeks ago.

 Here are the other components:

• honey
• watercress
• raspberries
• grissini (the breadsticks)
• rosemary
• raspberry chia thyme jam....see the recipe below
• pickles
• blackberries
• pears
• pine nuts
• seaweed 'caviar' (awesome texture)
• salami
• endive

and here are some suggested pairings

So let's get to making that easy raspberry spread! 

Makes enough for 1 cheese board for 4 people

/// Ingredients /// 

• 15 raspberries
• 1/2 T honey
• 1 T chia seeds
• leaves of 2 small sprigs of fresh thyme

/// Directions /// Add ingredients to a bowl. Mash with a fork and stir. Set aside to gel for at least 30 minutes. 

Remember, you too can build your own cheese board and enter to win a trip for two to Napa! 

Visit the Catello website

Go Enter!