Charcuterie plate

One of my favorite things to do for lunch at home is to make up a charcuterie plate with a variety of meat and cheese. These days I try to buy the food from the local cheese shop (since there is, in fact, a lovely little cheese shop in our city), but have also procured similar fixings from Whole Foods, or even the ordinary supermarket.

The cheeses on this plate were a Shropshire Blue (the yellow one in the photo), a Brabander, and a Garrotxa. Both the Brabander and the Garroxta are made with goat milk, but they were not “goat cheese” in the style of Chevre. Brabander is a kind of Gouda from the Netherlands, super buttery and creamy. Garrotxa is from Catalonia and is earthy and a little acidic.

To go with the cheese, there’s some very thinly sliced Wagyu beef bresaola, and a locally-made Genoa salami. The salami looks a bit more like bologna in this photo thatn maybe what one usually sees, but has the same taste profile. The bresaola is salt-and-air cured like prosciutto, intensifying the flavor of the beef.

To round out the plate, there’s some cornichons, pickled red onion, and mixed Spanish olives (most of which are being obscured by the big slice of Brabander). Plus some baguette slices. And the best part is that I still have enough of all of these things (except the bread) to have some again, probably for New Year’s Eve.