Day Twenty - Four : Wine and cheese for a girls night in!

Last night, after I had already posted my grilled cheese and tomato soup recipe, I thought about the fact that I had not done many cheese plate suggestions in my twenty three days of writing to you all. I love cheese plates and I love entertaining in my one hundred and fifty square foot studio....so I decided right then and there, I would made a dedicated effort to do more cheese plates over the course of my Fromagical musings...

Cheese plates are such a fun way to bring friends together! Whether it is for a girls night in or a cocktail party or a family dinner or for an event or say for a watching party for the Oscars or the Superbowl, cheese plates are the perfect addition. Last night, a good friend came over for wine, cheese, and supposedly a fun light hearted movie, it turned into us chatting instead of watching a film...

For our girls night in, I got a nice crisp New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, feeling optimistic that it was March and Spring was around the corner...granted snow is in the forecast tonight, but sauvignon blanc was the perfect wine for a nice cheese plate and a salad.

So lets go over what I made for my cheese plate, instead of placing a series of different cheeses on a board and providing crackers, bread, dried fruit, and nuts I decided to create three distinct pairings:

1. The classic: Toasted baguette topped with some olive oil, a sundried tomato, a sliver of mozzarella from Gourmet Garage (I actually really like their mozzarella, its very fresh, not too liquidy, and definitely melts in your mouth, not overly processed like some supermarket cheeses...), topped with some fresh basil and some black pepper.
2. The health nut: Toasted multigrain, three seed, flax bread from Trader Joe's with a sliced salted almond and a slice of aged Beemster Gouda (A waxy, nutty, carmelly aged gouda cheese, much more dynamic and dimensional and delish than its classic red wax sibling.)
3. The indulgence: Toasted ciabatta with a slice of St. Nectaire.  (A rustic, nutty and barnyardy semi soft raw cow's milk cheese from the Auvergne region of France, this baby has a natural rind that is infused with a slight flavor of the rye mats the cheese ages on for a few months.. The cool thing about this cheese is that the milk used for this cheese comes from cows grazing at 3000 feet above a volcanic mountain with thermal waters.)

I used about two to three slices of bread for each and cut each piece of bread down so you would have bite size portions of each sandwich. Then I thought with our cheese plate, that I'd make a simple green salad to complement all the bread. I made a really simple salad of arugula, almonds, crumbled herb goat cheese, some of my fav, chopped up goldball turnips, all tossed with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette (olive oil, balsamic, Maille mustard, and some chopped up garlic, herbs, salt and pepper). I tossed that all together and served it in two small bowls with the cheese plate and the wine. If I do say so myself, it was quite enjoyable!

Have a good night, lets keep our fingers crossed for no snow!!!