Food, Wine

Date Night

Two for cheese, please: On a night devoted to romance, nobody wants to do the dishes. Why not celebrate Valentine’s Day—or a stay-at-home date night—with a cheese board designed by you? Release your inner artiste and have fun with the colors and patterns you can create with cheese and all its tasty accompaniments. Steal these tips from the experts who have practically made cheese boards into a competitive sport:

Choose your base: a wooden cutting board, cake stand, marble remnant, slate, basket, tray or even a paella pan.

Gather your cheeses: Aim for variety. Young and aged, soft and firm, mild and pungent. Choose cow, goat, and sheep cheeses to provide a range of flavors.

Select some add-ons: French-style charcuterie (think pâté), Italian salumi, or Spanish chorizo make a cheese board into a hearty meal. Consider mortadella, prosciutto, or fennel salami from a local producer. Tangy condiments include cornichons, olives, mustard, marinated artichoke hearts and pickled vegetables. You’ll want some nuts at the party: pistachios, almonds, walnuts, cashews. Grapes adds freshness and dried fruits (raisins, apricots, dates, pears) are especially pleasing with triple-cream cheeses and blues. Crackers, flatbreads, grissini or sliced baguette are a must. Jams, chutneys and fruit pastes are also fun to have.

Make it pretty: Arrange the cheeses on the platter first, then place any ramekins. Fill in the gaps with rivers of nuts, fruit and crackers. Ta-da!

BEE MINE

In California’s sustainable vineyards, there’s an invading army you mostly can’t see. Ladybugs, beneficial mites, bees, parasitic wasps, praying mantis, spiders and other tiny soldiers are patrolling the leafy grapevines, hunting for aphids, harmful mites and other destructive insects that are up to no good.

By growing cover crops and maintaining thick stands of host plants, known as insectaries, grape growers can attract the hard-working predators that keep pest populations under control.

The Pour

Which Wine?

California sparkling wines range in price from easily affordable to big splurge, but all reliably lift the mood when that cork pops. No special glassware required. Slender sparkling wine flutes are nice for admiring the bead (that’s the bubble), but many somms prefer a standard wine glass.

Despite its delicacy, sparkling wine can handle the riot of flavors on a cheese board, from savory to sweet. Choose a blanc de blancs if the cheeses are mostly young and fresh, a brut if the selections are mostly aged or more robust. Sparkling rosé, with its romantic blush, is a Valentine in a bottle.

If you’d rather spend more time dining than cooking and cleaning up, why not assemble an abundant cheese board that will take your evening from antipasto through dessert?

Ingredients

Nuts in Honey:

¼ cup (85 g) honey
3 tablespoons mixed toasted nuts (walnut pieces, toasted almonds, pistachios)

If the honey is stiff, put the jar in a saucepan of barely simmering water over low heat until the honey liquefies enough to pour. In a small serving bowl, combine the honey and the nuts. Suggested Cheeses:

Laura Chenel Aged Crottin
Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam
Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor

Accompaniments:

Crackers and flatbreads
Sliced baguette
Prosciutto di Parma, thinly sliced
Sopressatta, thinly sliced
Black and green olives
Dried apricots, Medjool dates, and other dried California fruits
Roasted pistachios in shell

Directions

Add what you love; omit what you don’t. It’s yours to compose. Good cheese counters typically have many selections, like truffled cheeses, luscious triple-cream cheeses, and mini cheeses meant for two. Add roasted nuts, dried fruits, condiments, and crackers. You can purchase mixed nuts in honey but making your own is a cinch.