Cheese Plate by Numbers from Maya Corrigan

While browsing in the library, I spotted a book with an intriguing title: That Cheese Plate Will Change Your Life. I didn’t believe that any cheese plate had that much power, but the book’s subtitle hooked me: Creative Gatherings and Self-Care with the Cheese by Numbers Method. I’m a sucker for anything “by numbers.” I remember Paint by Numbers kits that I had as a kid. As an adult, I bought a book called Flower Arranging by Number. Neither my paintings nor my floral creations came close to looking like their models. Maybe I’d have more luck with cheese.

With New Year's Eve parties a few days away, cheese plates seemed like a timely subject for a post. I borrowed the book from the library and gave the cheese-plate-by-numbers method a try. It involves using 6 basic ingredients to make a balanced plate: 1-cheese, 2-meat, 3-produce, 4-crunch, 5-dip, 6-garnish. 

Written by Marissa Mullen and illustrated by Sara Gilanch, the book contains photos of roughly fifty cheese plates. The collection use plates or boards of different sizes and shapes. The photos are so beautiful that they qualify as food art. For each plate there’s an ingredient list, a diagram of where the ingredients go on the plate, and images showing how to build the plate in six steps. 

The author describes various techniques for preparing the ingredients for the plate.  Illustrations show how to cut cheeses that come in different shapes, whether wedges, bricks, or wheels like brie. “To dive into different textures and shapes with a cheese knife is oddly satisfying," the author says. She explains how to make a salami river that flows through the plate. You fold each salami slice into a fan shape and then overlap the slices on the plate, creating an arc or an S-shape. 

There are vegetarian cheese plates and some for people with various food sensitivities. The book also  contains a handful of recipes for items that might go on a platter, for example, marinated goat cheese with herbs, Southern pimiento cheese, and baked brie. 

Having looked at all the book's photos of cheese plates, I decided to wing it when I made my own for a group of four. Instead of taking the author's list of ingredients to the supermarket, I used what was in the fridge and the pantry: two cheeses of different colors, grapes, broccoli, radishes, crackers, cheese sticks, nuts, and salami. The best I could manage with the salami was a small pond with ripples instead of a river. If I'd followed the rules, I would have put a dip in place of the nuts, and I didn't have any garnish on hand. At best, my cheese plate would have earned a C grade, but it was the most attractive one I'd ever made. I'll have to wait until my next attempt to discover if my life has changed in a small way or if I go back to slapping three different cheeses on a plate with crackers on the side.  

A week after I made my cheese plate, I visited friends who hadn't read That Cheese Plate Will Change Your Life. Their cheese board was nonetheless quite attractive. 

 READERS: What nibbles are you planning for New Year's Eve?

I wish you all a happy, healthy 2025!

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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