Susan Writes

It’s more than a cheese tray.  More than pepperoni and salami on a platter.  More than a fruit plate.  More than a basket of crackers and a bowl of nuts.  It’s cheese, fruit, crackers, nuts, and cured meats on a flat board, any size and any shape.  It’s a charcuterie board.

            When I first heard charcuterie, I asked, “A char what?”  I looked up the word in my online dictionary: cold cooked meats.  It wasn’t in my trusty paperback Webster’s New Dictionary, copyright 2002.  What’s the origin of the word?  When and how did charcuterie boards become the rage for entertaining? 

            According to online sources, charcuterie is from two French words: ‘chair,’ meaning flesh and ‘cuit,’ meaning cooked.  It was a way to preserve meat, before refrigeration was available, and to prepare meat products.  During the first century in Rome, meat was salted and cured, and centuries later charcutiers in 15^th century France produced and sold bacon, sausages, head cheese – any pork that could be preserved. 

            Corkdining.com states that charcuterie is rooted in the belief that nothing from the animal should be wasted; not even the heart, lungs, kidneys, fat, or brain.  This takes me back to hog-killing day on the Friday after Thanksgiving when I was a kid when Dad and Granny certainly didn’t know cured meats were called such a fancy word as charcuterie.

             According to most sources, a charcuterie board must include meat, so add cured meat to a simple cheese tray and voila!  During the past few years, charcuterie boards have evolved into meals, party themes, works of art, and almost anything goes. 

            Wanting to learn to create a board from a master, I recently took a class taught by Diego Alvarez, the owner of the Royal House of Cheese.  On my working space, he placed a two-inch thick, eleven-inch diameter wooden disc and enough food to feed a family of six.  Grapes. Strawberries and raspberries.  Three kinds of cheese.  Salami, polish sausage, and prosciutto. Dried apricots and cranberries.  A sleeve of round crackers. Handfuls of bagel chips and nuts.

            Was it possible to balance all of that on something with no sides? And what went where?

Diego patiently explained the circle as a clock face and suggested the placement of foods.  As crackers slid, he expertly fanned them into a crescent.  He suggested food arrangements based on flavors that complement each other and said to vary textures and colors.

            Diego is an excellent teacher, as well as entertaining, and I created a charcuterie board that I proudly served to guests the next day.  Only one raspberry rolled onto the floor.  And Diego taught me how to confidently say charcuterie: char- like to blacken meat, cu- like cu when saying a cute baby, and erie rolls off the tongue to rhyme with rotisserie.

            Now that I can put together charcuterie boards, will they go the way of fondue?  Remember fondue parties in the 1970’s?  By the time I hosted one, they were going out of style.

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I first saw her black afro and its red highlights. “You all want to go on the next tram tour?” How did she talk and grin at the same time? Her dark eyes sparkled against her dark skin. “Hop on. We leave again in ten minutes,” she said and then walked toward the welcome center at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.

He stood ramrod straight, about 6″ 2″ tall.  His grey-rimmed glasses matched his eyes and hair; his fair complexion could burn under the Florida sun, even on this winter day.  “I like to get to know people. Where are you from?”  he asked in a controlled monotone.

At 12:00 noon, tram driver Bridgette took her seat and helped Rodg untangle the wires on his headset microphone. Then we twenty or so guests set off for a one-hour, two-mile tour of the eighty-three-acre park.

First impressions. She was short, feisty, middle age.  He was tall, serious, retirement age. The driver and the guide couldn’t seem more opposite.

The tram travelled slowly as Rodg pointed to and named trees, shrubs, flowering plants; he included scientific names that I can’t spell or pronounce. “That’s a royal palm.  There’s a clonal palm – it’s leaves are used on thatched roofs. And there’s a…….,” Rodg hestitated.  He looked at Bridgette; she said names that he repeated and then he said, “I taught her everything she knows and now tells me.”  He chuckled quietly.

“Stop at the lipstick tree and let’s see who wants red lips,” he said. After the tram stopped, he slowly walked toward a branch loaded with ping-pong size red fruits.  He stretched his arm overhead and touched a fruit with his fingertips, but didn’t grasp it. Bridgette stepped off the tram and jumped to pull down the branch with one hand, and grabbed a fruit with her other hand. 

Rodg explained the origin of the tree and opened the fruit filled tiny balloon-like seeds.  Red liquid squirted when he squeezed the seeds. “Anyone want red lips?  Or maybe stripes on your cheeks or forehead?  It’ll wear off in a week or so.”  

The next stop Rodg suggested everyone get off the tram and look up for football-size yellow pods. He asked, “Does anybody like chocolate?” and he talked about the tropical evergreen cocoa tree.  I stood apart from the group, near Bridgette. “You and Rodg have a good time together, don’t you?” I said. 

Bridgette’s face softened. “I love that man. He’s in the beginning phase of Parkinson’s, and they (the park management) thought he should quit.  But he’s so kind and knowledgeable and I said I’d be his driver.  Now we do just three tours a day, only two days a week, and we have fun.”

At the Fairchild Garden, I saw beautiful trees and plants and a butterfly conservatory.  Birds, iguanas, and lizards scattered quickly from sight. But my take-away at this botanical garden was the respect and friendship between two people who are so very different. 

She saw only the best in him.

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