Car­ol Quash

Noth­ing brings peo­ple to­geth­er like sports and good food.

And with the World Cup in full swing, Fleur Rus­sell is cook­ing up an idea that will al­low fans to show full sup­port for their teams while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­ing able to “graze” at their con­ve­nience dur­ing the games.

The founder and di­rec­tor of The Cheese Plat­ter Com­pa­ny told WE Life & Cul­ture she is get­ting ready to in­tro­duce her World Cup char­cu­terie plat­ters and graz­ing ta­bles, which will be loaded with enough de­li­cious treats to keep fans fo­cused on their good­ies as much as on the game.

“Be­cause I re­alise peo­ple are hav­ing a lot of gath­er­ings and get-to­geth­ers to watch the match­es, we will be do­ing World Cup-themed boards, so what­ev­er team you’re sup­port­ing, we can cus­tomise it,” flags and all.

Typ­i­cal­ly, char­cu­terie boards com­prise cured meats, cheeses, carbs such as crack­ers and sliced baguette, jams, jel­lies and sauces, briny ex­tras such as olives and ca­per berries, fruits and nuts, and some­times sweets.

Be­cause of their lay­out, they al­low guests to eas­i­ly ac­cess their culi­nary con­tents at their own pace. Rus­sell said her plat­ters, graz­ing ta­bles and carts in­clude some of her own man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts.

“I’m go­ing to be fea­tur­ing a lot on my boards: the pop­u­lar cumin gou­da and the truf­fle gou­da. An­oth­er one that is pop­u­lar is my Amaret­to cran­ber­ry pecan cheese ball. That has al­ways been the star of any cheese board that I make, and the fact that it is in the shape of a ball will make it all the more ap­peal­ing,” along­side her pas­sion fruit jam, pas­sion fruit pep­per jel­ly, cran­ber­ry pep­per jel­ly, and tape­nades.

“I al­so have bal­sam­ic fig jam,” which she de­scribed as “amaz­ing.”

Rus­sell start­ed the Cheese Plat­ter Com­pa­ny eight years ago, stem­ming from her knack for cu­rat­ing aes­thet­i­cal­ly de­li­cious plat­ters for fam­i­ly and friends. This even­tu­al­ly led to her cater­ing cor­po­rate events.

But the re­al gen­e­sis of the sto­ry dates back to her child­hood snack of Kraft cheese cubes and grapes, which ig­nit­ed her love for cheeses.

Nat­u­ral­ly, she went on to study Food Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, and the first prod­uct she made was cheese. She taught her­self how to make ar­ti­san cheese from scratch, hav­ing done ex­ten­sive re­search, and even ven­tur­ing to France to ex­pe­ri­ence the pro­duc­tion of the fa­mous Chevre (goat cheese), which is cater­gorised as one of the health­i­est of cheeses.

“I loved mak­ing cheese, but then I re­alised it wasn’t go­ing to be sus­tain­able be­cause

we don’t pro­duce enough milk for cheese-mak­ing in Trinidad. So that’s when I start­ed to fo­cus more on the im­port­ed, pur­chased stuff.”

She ini­tial­ly put to­geth­er boards with store-bought items, grad­u­al­ly in­cor­po­rat­ing her own prod­ucts as they be­came avail­able.

“Some of our prod­ucts are now on re­tail shelves, in­clud­ing our sig­na­ture jams and dips, and our Grab & Graze box­es,” specif­i­cal­ly de­signed for the busy pro­fes­sion­al and gym-go­ers. She said the char­cu­terie land­scape con­tin­ues to change, with peo­ple now do­ing cones, cups, flutes, glass­es, mi­ni box­es and a myr­i­ad of oth­er types, and she had to equip her­self to keep up with these changes, her­self of­fer­ing a range of in­di­vid­ual char­cu­terie ex­pe­ri­ences.

As a flight at­ten­dant, Rus­sell has had the ad­van­tage of be­ing able to vis­it cheese mar­kets in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, see the cre­ativ­i­ty of the in­dus­try, and learn about the es­sen­tials of pair­ing – things that com­ple­ment the dif­fer­ent types of cheeses on a char­cu­terie. She has ob­served that there are a num­ber of small busi­ness own­ers in T&T who have good in­dus­try-re­lat­ed prod­ucts, and she is not above us­ing those on her plat­ters if they add val­ue to the taste of her boards.

“For me, it’s not about com­pe­ti­tion. If I find a prod­uct that can work well with what is on my plat­ter, why wouldn’t I use it?”

Rus­sell said one of the main ob­jec­tives of The Cheese Plat­ter Com­pa­ny is to save peo­ple who don’t like be­ing in the kitchen the has­sle of hav­ing to make their own cheese boards.

“Cus­tomers can get a pre-de­signed cheese­board or a pre-made cheese­board de­signed by us. They can al­so or­der on­line, and we of­fer na­tion­wide de­liv­ery. Usu­al­ly or­ders should be placed one to two days in ad­vance.

“I would love it if some­body could call and or­der and im­me­di­ate­ly get it, but lo­gis­tics right now doesn’t al­low for that.”

She al­so of­fers an op­tion for peo­ple who want to put their own plat­ters to­geth­er.

“They can just pur­chase cheese­board es­sen­tials if they pre­fer to just cre­ate it them­selves. I’m now car­ry­ing a line of gou­da cheese, which is a truf­fle gou­da and cumin gou­da. You may not pur­chase a cheese board from me, but I want to be able to pro­vide you with some in­di­vid­ual items to go with it… The most pop­u­lar ones are def­i­nite­ly the pas­sion fruit pep­per jel­ly and the cran­ber­ry pep­per jel­ly, which will soon be avail­able in stores or they be can pur­chased on­line.”

Her plan is for her brand to be­come a house­hold name through­out T&T and the re­gion, and who knows, the kick-off of this ini­tia­tive just might score her some goals.

“Graz­ing is con­ve­nient; it’s some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent that I en­joy watch­ing while en­ter­tain­ing peo­ple. I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing how this one turns out.”