WRITTEN BY RANA ZAIM
Mother’s day is just around the corner, and Rana Zaim from The Grazing Hour is here to help you up your homemade gift levels! In addition to your classic card and paper flowers, take mom on a picnic she’ll never forget. Take a look at Rana’s step-by-step guide showing you how to create a perfect patio charcuterie board with all the ingredients you can easily find at the market.
CHOOSING YOUR BOARD
The first step when making your board is to decide ahead of time whether you want to go square or round, how many people you’re looking to feed, and a general idea of what you’d like on it. Creating a beautiful charcuterie board can seem much more intimidating without some sort of a blueprint, even if it is just a mental one! For today’s creation we chose a round lazy Susan, the perfect home for a salami floral centerpiece.
CREATING THE PERFECT MOTHER’S DAY MIX
Choosing what to put on a board can also seem overwhelming, but as I always say, the more the merrier!
When it comes to cheese, it’s always good to have some staples in mind; for instance, we always use brie and goat cheese, which are both soft. From there, add cheeses of different textures and tastes. Some of the favorites that we recommend are a semi-soft with the parsley & chive jack cheese, a semi-hard with the manchego, and a hard with the rosemary & olive oil asiago.
As far as meats, there are many options, and I encourage you to explore, find what you love, and always leave room to discover! A great place to start would be the salami trio we’re using from Columbus Craft Meats. A little spice and a slight variation is just what we’re going for! There are countless ways to display your cured meats on your board, but I’ve grown quite fond of the florals; it really brings on the “wow” factor in presentation and is a great way to pack on the meat while leaving room for everything else!
Now that you’ve styled your salami centerpiece, set up your cheeses next! That way, you’ll know how much real estate you’ve got left on the board to fill with your accompaniments! My favorite party trick is to sit my goat cheese on fanned-out brie and top it all with a delicious jam or chutney. I’ve yet to find a jam/goat cheese combo I don’t love, especially ones like this Trifecta triple berry jam from Gus & Grey that have actual chunks of berry mixed in! As for the rest of the cheese, you can display however you see fit, but using different cuts gives your art dimension and opens up possibilities for displaying! We’ve got our brie/goat, “zippered” manchego, cubed jack, and tiered asiago with a small bowl of olives, leaving the rest of the canvas to be filled.
Fresh fruit is a must on any board. A pile of grapes and berries not only adds texture but the perfect pop of color. In our case, displaying the fruit next to the goat cheese and jam will tie it all together and can lead right into our dry fruit! Dried fruit is always a must, and with so many different options, the possibilities are endless. This is another excellent opportunity to incorporate some color, whether bolder like apricots or papaya or subtle like our dried pineapple. And last but certainly not least, add some nuts for texture and, in this case, some dessert! I typically roast my own with a more savory flavor; however, these cinnamon roasted almonds from Ferris Nut Company are the perfect crunchy counterparts to balance out our savory.
Now that you’ve come this far, it’s time to pick a cracker! There are so many different options out there, but my favorites are the 34 degrees crisps. We’re using the rosemary flavor with our board. They are light and crispy and the perfect canvas to house any grazing combination you can come up with! The texture is perfect, and the rosemary adds just enough extra flavor. As a finishing touch, I filled our gaps with some yogurt-covered raisins as another sweet option, a sliced fresh fig, and voila! Bring a basket of fresh flowers and Olipop and spoil mom for the day.
REMEMBER TO SIT DOWN AND RELAX
Whether you're making the board for your Mother this upcoming Mother's Day or you're planning on building one together for an experience, make sure you're having fun with it. Kick back, enjoy and spend some quality time with your family this Sunday.
Rana from The Grazing Hour learned how to make her charcuterie creations by experimenting and bringing her boards to her family's Thanksgiving celebrations. They became an immediate staple and were love and looked forward to by her family. Each year, Rana would take a photo to share with her friends and family and try to outdo her previous board from year to year. After posting a few of her photos, she started to get a following and eventually had individuals reach out to her to ask if she would make one for hire! The rest is history. The best part? Rana's gets to enjoy turning food into art, and every board is a new design. You can follow The Grazing Hour on Instagram to see all of Rana's beautiful creations at @TheGrazingHour.
Don't forget to tag us both in your Mother's Day grazing boards at @TheGrazingHour and @WoodwardCornerMarket. Have a happy Mother's Day!