KC 281 – Post Wedding Charcuterie Wreckage

Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where one man is constantly spat out of the gnashing chaotic maw of Charybdis for being too gristly. I’m your expectorated (really, that second vowel isn’t an A? Gaston has ONCE AGAIN led me astray.) explorer, Jon O’Guin, and…man, what a week. If you didn’t read the Facebook post: my brother got married on Saturday! Congratulations to the new bride and Groom who should be out of the country right now, so I should have at least a week before anything I say here gets back to them. (Other countries don’t have the internet, right?) Anyway, ONE of the many roles I played during the proceedings was as the architect of the meat and cheese boards, or what some people call ‘charcuterie’. I’ll explain why that both is and isn’t right, but if you want to skip it and go straight to the “recipe”, here’s the link. For everyone else, let’s dig in.

A Week, A Wreck, a Beef on Weck

My love of rhyming really impairs my ability to communicate clearly at times. Anywho, I want to open up by noting that, yes, 3ish years ago, we ALREADY covered how my family does Cheese boards. Technically. Somehow, despite having TWO posts about this, themselves years ago, I never once called them “cheese boards” before today, instead calling them “cheese plates”. Which now I’m expanding even FURTHER with the concept of charcuterie, a word I have only mentioned on the site THREE times before, and one of them was last week’s plug for this post, so maybe we should expand on that a little.

Wait, first, I should mention that I currently am, and was recently in, a little bit of a wreck.

A VERY little car accident, from my perspective.

Specifically, to further elaborate on the illustration of “my brother got married”, I would add that over the five days my family set aside for the event, I:

-Drove or rode over 950 miles.

-Got in a very minor car accident. (Knocked the mirror off of a sedan I didn’t see pull up next to me as I crept out of a turn lane due to bumper-to-bumper traffic preventing me from making the turn I had planned.)

-Hauled 20 pounds of meat and cheese 200 miles for the event

-discovered I had left my wall-plug phone charger in Leavenworth, meaning I would have to rely on my car charger

-Discovered my cousin, who had been helping, had gone into labor a month earlier than expected, so my family had to run up and pick up the stuff her family had been planning on bringing, since obviously that was more important.

-helped prepare and make the rehearsal dinner

-Apparently took a screenshot of this meme

I don’t know WHY I took this, but now I have it.

-plan the trays for the meat and cheese, then built said trays, while also taking wedding pictures

-Co-officiated the wedding ceremony and co-emceed the reception

-drank and danced until roughly 1 AM.

-Woke up at 8 and discovered my car had died.

-Spent 3 hours getting the batteries replaced and learning the problem was probably the alternator.

-Driving home to drop off all the stuff and leaving the car at the dealer.

-Discovering I had left my car charger in the Excursion, so my phone died Sunday night.

-Getting back to Leavenworth Monday afternoon, discovering I actually had BOTH my phone chargers the whole time.

A LOT of activity for me, especially in the realms of driving and “being forced to endure direct sunlight”. As I joked several times, I sleep and WORK in a basement, both in PO and Leavenworth. Like, I told the story of this TWICE in the last day, and I COMPLETELY FORGOT to include my cousin giving birth as part of it, there was so much going on.

As such, didn’t really have time to do much cooking: the rehearsal dinner was Costco hamburger patties and Beyond Burgers cooked on a flat-top griddle. NOR did I have the time to take pictures of what I was doing.  Hence why this post is the “wreckage”: literally, I have like, 1/8th of the total meat and cheeses used to take pictures of with me right now, so I’m going to have to go off of that, maybe convince my family to send me some pictures, and generally just try to kitbash it all together. So first, let’s get a little technical.

A Tale of Tw(enty) Cheeses

That’s not a joke. Technically we had 22 cheeses for the event. BUT FIRST, we want to talk about the general details. So, we’ve talked about Cheese boards/cheese plates before. They’re very popular with my family for holiday events because they’re fairly low effort if someone else does most of the cutting, they’re a fun way to play around with a lot of bold flavors, and they’re easy to eat while doing other things.

In some ways, we’ve come a long way. In others, this is basically the same.

Now, the title of this says “charcuterie”, which is a word some people might object to me using to describe the boards I made. TECHNICALLY, the word charcuterie directly refers to meats, the word itself being comprised of the French words for “flesh (chair) and “cooked” (cuit), and the word charcuterie was first used to refer to products sold by a charcutier, basically a kind of cured-pork-meat butcher/salesman. Like, if you wanted sausages, salami, rilletes, or a bunch of other types of salted/cured meats, you went to these guys. As such, some people get tetchy when you call a mixed plate of meat and cheese (and other elements) “charcuterie”, because it only refers to the meal. Which I’m kind of in agreement with, with a notable exception. I think calling it a charcuterie BOARD/plate is perfectly fine, because in English we can label meals/plates based on focal ingredient: a plate or meal can be a “turkey dinner” despite having potatoes, stuffing, and green beans. So no, technically, cheese is not charcuterie, but I think it can be served as part of a charcuterie board.

Now, I just want to point out here that charcuterie isn’t new. It’s been in cookbooks for well over 50 years in its modern form. Similar ideas of dishes have been recorded as far back as Rome, and in England in the 1300’s. So no, it’s not just that it’s “lunchables for adults”…or rather, it kind of is, it’s just that “a free form locale to mix meats, cheeses, and bread products” Is a pretty classic combo. Lunchables are charcuterie for kids, is my point.

I will yield that products like these definitely drive home the comparison, though.

That’s a fair bit of historical context and personal anecdotes. Let’s jump into the specifics. What did WE get, and how can I reconcile two conflicting data points?

Whip it into Shape

Those data points are, if you go back and read my first Cheese board post, where I recommend that you stick to around 4-5 cheeses per board…and I also just said that I had 22 cheeses at this event. Well, dear reader, first of all, I’d like to note that I’ve come a long way since that first statement, and I do think I can pretty easily handle 10 cheeses on a board. But the other facet was simple: we were making more than one board.

We had something like 140 people coming to the event, so we weren’t just designing one cheese and meat board. We were designing two STATIONS of meat-and–cheese boards. And I do have to give kudos to my brother Stephen for giving me the insight to really make the plan work. See, as noted, we had 22 Cheeses, and 18 meats to choose from for our platters, and I was working on how best to pair them up. The Hungarian salami is a little spicy, in a vaguely pepperoni like way, so do I pair it with the sweet cheeses for contrast, or the spicy cheeses, or… and as I was working these through, Stephen, trying a piece of salami, waved off the idea, noting that “once you start talking about pairings, you’re over my head.” And that actually really helped, because it reminded me that I wasn’t building these trays for people like me, but for people like my grandparents, and my cousins’ children.

So what we ended up doing was creating 4 trays per station, each with an explanation of the overall flavor of the board, and the things on it. Like, we had a “spicy” board, which consisted of smoked paprika salami, garlic cheese curds, horseradish Havarti, marinated pepper cheese curds, and a couple other elements. We had a sweet(ish) board with fennel salami, citrus salami, a lemon-honey cheese, a sweeter sheep’s milk gouda, etc. By organizing by flavor, and providing maps that told people what each element was, we didn’t have to worry about pairings, we just gave them the info they needed to build for themselves.

Like this, but without toothpicks, and with better handwriting.

We had the “bold” tray with bleu cheeses, truffle salami, and other big flavors. We were GOING to have a “normie” tray, with a pack of pre-sliced Costco cheeses, and like, ham and turkey, but then we ran out of trays and time. And also felt like insulting our guests to their faces was a little TOO far.

Now, to briefly recap the Unified Theory of Cheese/Charcuterie Boards: the thing that’s important is a variety of textures and flavors. This is actually very important: you know about the “dessert stomach”, also known as the “second stomach”? The phenomenon where you’re completely full, until the waiter suggests dessert? That’s actually a real psychological thing, and it’s based on…well, to simplify, boredom. Your brain gets bored feeling the same textures and tasting the same flavors, so it tells you it’s full, even though it technically isn’t. Thus, if you want people to eat a lot of your cheese board/charcuterie, you’ll want to give them different textures and flavors.

Joshua Weissman, of “But Better” and “But Cheaper” fame (ie “how to make X…but better”) divides the 5 main components of a cheese board as Cheese, meat, “cronch”, Pickley/Briny, and fruity/sweet. And that’s a very solid list of categories, once you know that ‘Cronch’ means “crunchy/crispy”, so the crackers, almonds, baguettes, etc. Breaking down a couple of the categories further, I like having an array of textures and flavors in the cheeses themselves (get a couple that are more crumbly, some that are firmer, others that are soft, etc. Get a couple sheep’s or goat’s milk cheeses, etc) and a similar range in meat selections: a firm summer sausage versus a paper-thin slice of prosciutto, etc.

Bringing home the Speck

So let’s put a pin on this bad boy, and break down what did, and didn’t, make it on our trays. Or at least, a small sample of it, because holy hell I am not starting a 40 point list this deep into a post.

Here’s a picture of Five of the Meats we used.

A great array of reds.

Going Clockwise from the right, They are

Speck: A relative of Prosciutto, Speck comes from Northeast Italy, which, as we touched on in, weirdly, our post about Switzerland, abuts Austria. This is important because speck is actually a German word, meaning “pork fat”, often used to refer to Bacon or pork belly products. It’s not as salty as prosciutto, but typically has a ‘deeper’ flavor, due to the ingredients used in its cure. Think the difference between a pot roast and a steak. This one went on the “savory 1” tray (the tray originally meant to be a step-up from “normie”, but not spicy or very bold.

Hungarian: Denoted by the presence of a modicum of paprika (a spice Hungary is crazy for), this salami tastes mostly like a more delicate pepperoni: paprika, pepper, and garlic all give the same kind of low-level spiciness you might associate with a slice of pizza. We put it on the spicy tray, with a bit of a “well, I GUESS this can go here.”

Porcini: My family are big Umami fans, so this salami, made with powdered porcini mushrooms, was one we definitely wanted to include. We put it on the Bold Tray, which in a lot of regards probably should have been renamed the “Funky” tray, but people are philistines.

Smoked Paprika: If you want something that’s “like” pepperoni, let me tell you, this one is ACTIVELY ADVERTISED as being basically pepperoni: it’s got fennel seed, cayenne, paprika, and is directly smoked. It’s a more intense version of what Hungarian brings to the table, which is why it definitely got to sit on the “spicy” tray.

And lastly: Truffle. Because we bougie as fuck, and if Porcini was going to do well with us, rest assured, Truffle was going to do better. Big, bold, throw that mushroom-y bastard on the Bold tray to hang out with the Blue cheeses.

Speaking of, the Cheeses!

Or at least a tiny sample of them.

I only have three, because…well, as noted, I’m in Leavenworth. Most of the food went with my mom and Nate to Port Orchard. I only snagged a couple chunks to bring to town with me, back to where they came from. (Shout out, by the way, to The Cheesemonger’s Shop for accommodating our order, and a BIG shout-out to Cured by Visconti’s, where we purchased the meats from. They really went above and beyond to get the order ready for us, cutting all the meats and pre-portioning them in ¼ lb increments so we didn’t have to open a whole pound at a time. Maybe it’s just because they know me pretty well (every time I’m in town I buy at least a couple bags of salami or jerky), but they really helped me out.)

That plug out of the way, let’s get on with the REST of the cheese. I’m not going to give you an order, because they’re all labeled. If you can’t read the label, luckily they all have different word counts, so it shouldn’t be hard to figure out.

Lemon-Honey Wensleydale: Wensleydales are a sweeter cheese, often paired with fruit to the point that I know of at least 4-5 versions that pre-include the fruit, or at least its flavor (This one, A Blueberry, a raspberry, a strawberry, a pineapple, etc) In parts of England, Wensleydale is seen as the TRADITIONAL accompaniment to a slice of Apple pie, like how Vermont likes their pie with cheddar. It’s crumbly, sweet, and feels almost like if someone partially dried out cream cheese.

Fourmage: Fourmage is made from 4 different milks, hence the pun in the name: Cow, Goat, Sheep, and Water Buffalo. The result is a cheese I think would be very good for someone just branching into more exotic cheeses: it retains a bit of the funk of the Goat and Sheep, but with a texture and richness kind of like a mozzarella or Colby jack.

Glacier Blue: A blue cheese made here in Washington, which I tried a sample of while placing the order and immediately added to the order. There’s something icy about the funk of the cheese: almost like cold chlorinated water. That may not sound appealing to you, but as a guy who eats a fair amount of soft and blue cheeses, I assure you, you get some weird tasting notes in them. I actually particularly liked it when paired with the speck.

So that’s a peak into around ¼ of the meats we used, and around 1/7th of the cheeses. What else went on the boards? …Fairly little, I have to confess. Sure, I BOUGHT 10ish containers of pickled eggs and veggies, olives, etc. And we brought a series of different spreads and honeys…but in the chaos of getting everything sorted out, we only got maybe 4 or 5 things on the tables: some whole grain mustard, some spicy pickled quail’s eggs, I literally at one point pulled off my plastic gloves from cutting and placing cheese, walked into the other room, and 2 minutes later started the wedding ceremony. So we had to leave some soldiers behind, as it were.

My other jar of pickled eggs didn’t get out there!
Why did I invest so much in pickled eggs?

Let’s wrap this up, because it’s already almost 10 PM on the day I said I’d get this up.  So let’s go with a kind of “quasi recipe” to wrap it all up. As long as you follow these guidelines, you’ll have some good trays. In the meantime…I need a drink and a nap.

NEXT MONDAY: HELL IF I KNOW. I KIND OF WANTED TO DO A THEME MONTH FOR AUGUST, BUT WHO KNOWS IF I CAN WORK OUT SOMETHING. PALETAS? AGUA FRESCAS? ANOTHER ASIAN AUGUST? “AUTHOR’S AUGUST”?

Here's a

General Recipe for A Good Cheese/Charcuterie Board

Ingredients

Per Person

2-3 ounces Cheese (preferably divided into ½ ounce of 4+ cheeses)

1-2 ounces Cured Meats

1 ounce fruit and veggies

1 ounce pickled or brined components

1 ounce bread/crackers

½ ounce sauces

Add 3 ounces between meat, cheese, and bread if you want to have the boards count as a meal.