Tell me about your ideal cheese board and have you ever ever made your own crackers ?

[Pollyanni]

Hoping for Friday night traffic to tell me what to take to a dinner party where I'm doing the cheese board. I normally cook so it's a real treat someone else is handling the majority of the food but I want to take some nice cheese and also make biscuits. I offered to do dessert or cheese and they asked me to go cheese. I love the Peter's yard crackers but they're ££ and I can't make cheese but I can bake so thought I'd do a cheese and nut biscuit and a rosemary cracker but all recipes welcome as I haven't done them before !
I was thinking grapes and maybe figs, celery (?) and a chutney and for cheese maybe a creamy one , a Lancashire as I'm from here and some others but a bit quirkier - hit me up with me your faves that I might be able to get at booths or the market cheese stall. Themes of flavours I can adapt to what's available. Hopefully I will find some cheese fiends among you ! Thank you 🙏

Comte
Roquefort
really creamy mild brie
a stinky gooey camembert type french cheese, Italian hard cheese with chillis (again I forget the name?)
A natural smoked strong cheddar
and a British medium goats cheese.

Never made my own crackers, but would just serve it with a few different nice breads.
And some grapes and pear/apple slices.
Maybe some onion chutney.

Gawd I'm craving cheese now!!! 🤣🧀🧀🧀

My definition of good cheese board is a nice cheddar, nice stilton and nice brie/camembert with a couple of chutneys and no crackers but I'm sensing that's not what you are after.

Cheese a mix of decent french and UK cheeses at room temperature

Thin crisp crackers

Grapes - green

I love this thread! Thank you for starting it, OP.

I adore a cheeseboard. Two cheeses that I really like are Perl Wen (soft and creamy like brie) and Perl Las (soft blue). And I love Cornish yarn too.

I thinking of asking SIL if I can be in charge of providing the cheese board on Christmas Day.

M&S Cornish Cruncher is lovely as a Cheddar for the less adventurous cheese eaters

Oh... they are fab. Did DD's cheese wedding cake a few weeks ago.

Deliveries and online tastings by them kept us sane during lockdown!

I love picos de Europa blue but that is a Major Cheese and it's Very Blue, almost grey actually. You have to eat it pretty much as soon as you buy it from the shop.

Baron bigod is an excellent British brie/camembert style cheese, quite strong.

I love a Lancashire, we had one in a big black bomb shape last Christmas and it was truly delicious.

Comte is quite nutty, I love both that and gruyère very much.

Re Peter's Yard and the deliciousness but also expensiveness of the crackers: I reckon the supermarkets will have the multi pack box in their Christmas section by now, often reduce to a fiver. Obviously still expensive compared to own brand crackers but a lot less than they usually are.

This would win my vote. 😊

I agree with the suggestion to add some extras - fruit cake, frozen grapes, caramelised walnuts, maybe figs and/or celery but buy the crackers.

So I
Might buy crackers (but make some GF ones here for my son) and make caramelised walnuts as a wee treat.
I'm so so craving cheese now. I adore it.

I saw an advert for this today:
https://www.crackerdash.com/

A tube of Primula and some breadsticks.

If you like to cook provide a fresh onion jam made with brown sugar and balsamic and dress the board with grapes and some curly celery sticks (destring and split before putting in iced water for an hour).

There are loads of biscuit recipes on line but I don't think that there's much better than a buttery puff pastry square, forked all over, with a herb of your choosing between the layers. I use a simple rough puff but fold a few extra times once the herbs and sea salt go in. Home made Melba toast is lovely with cheese too.
For the cheeses: depends on how many people and if they love cheese. More people: a soft, washed rind cheese like Brie, a mature cheddar, a blue cheese (eg Stilton), a smoked cheese and a mild cheese like Edam, with lots of grapes.
For fewer people or for cheese lovers: Baron Bigod or a good Camembert, Long Clawson or cold ton Basset Stilton, Sparkenhoe mature Red Leicester. All of those will carry a home made buttery pastry cracker with lots of rosemary really well. British, simple, classic. A really big wedge (or whole wheel) of each, room temperature.

I'd forgotten about Lancashire Bombs - they are indeed very good. You really don't need to look outside the county, OP!

http://lancashirebombs.co.uk

Still craving cheese now. Too early? Off shopping soon !

Charcoal Cheddar is a good addition, tastes lovely too! You can get it from Dewleys, also lots of other places in lancs do it too.

Never too early.

Let us know what you ended up with.

I've made lots of crackers abd I really recommend this website fir recipes
https://moorlandseater.com/cheesejacks-cheese-oat-snacks/

here's some I made fir crimbo last year, mainly from that blog

So I've been and got:
Beetroot and Nigella crackers
Ale chutney
Grapes
Brie
Tasty Lancashire
Yarg
Comte
A creamy one I've forgotten the name of
A truffle flavoured one
Black sticks blue
Fingers crossed it is all good. I got small ish wedges of each so might also go to booths for another one...! The yarg was out for tasting today and was so so nice

@StiffyByngsDogBartholomew just wow!!😮

I regularly make these crackers, they are incredibly easy and super cheap to do. I usually make a big batch of the dough then add different seeds and flavourings as I roll them out, and grate Parmesan over one lot before they go in the oven.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sea-salt-water-biscuits

This is the cheese board I put together for a good friend recently. I had never done one before and wanted to contribute. There were 10 of us and I wanted extra so she could enjoy it on into the week. I had 6 hard cheeses and 6 soft cheeses, including a good look at vegetarian. I tried to obtain different types and flavours. I bought a local cheddar, smoked, manchego-type, stilton, wensleydale, baron bigod, boursin garlic &herb, chourse, etc. I added dried apricots, dried figs, golden raisins, pistachio nuts, walnuts, fresh grapes, cherry tomatoes. Small pickled gherkins. Posh French butter. My crackers included Peters yard (including charcoal), aldi round crackers love them, salt, pepper, rosemary), mixed box of 10 types from Sainsbury, and then a couple of posh ones with seeds.

I didn't make the crackers, but I did make 2 different chutneys from BBC good food. Surprisingly easy.

I think I'd call that a cheese buffet - a whole meal - not just a 'cheese board'!

@TheFlis I made them but I think they're too thick as they've puffed up and not crisping up even though they're now cold. Any tips if I try again?