Charcuterie 'can be as flat or complex as you want it to be'
Jun. 29—Charcuterie boards can be an art form, or it can be a really simple way to get finger foods into the hands of your guests quickly.
"It can be as flat or complex as you want it to be," says Ariel Lawless, owner of Seaboard Charcuterie.
A charcuterie board consists of fruits, cheeses and meats primarily. It doesn't have to be any more than that, but Lawless believes in putting her all into whatever she does. Which is why her charcuterie boards are basically those she would personally like to eat. It's turned into a very active side business for her.
She gets a lot of ideas for her board designs from other businesses on Instagram, on which she is also active at instagram.com/seaboardcharcuterie.
"I've just kind of picked up new styles along the way and stuck with what's worked for me," Lawless said. "It always depends on what kinds of cheese I get and how it fits."
That said, she's also developed a few signatures that can be seen in her arrangements. One is grapes around the corners and edges of the board.
"It keeps everything in and makes sure things don't fall off the sides," Lawless says.
Another is her flower arrangement technique, as her professional boards always include plenty of live decorations. There's always a statement flower — one of a few flowers she always likes to include — and a greenery of some sort, mostly herbs from her garden. Recently, oregano has been the favorite.
"Flowers, they always go around the edges as well," she said. "The oregano goes in the middle to give it a little texture."
When deciding what foods to include on a plate, she likes to include things you wouldn't normally eat and may be a bit exotic. Truffle cheese, blueberry goat cheese and Tuscany cheese soaked in wine, all are a little unusual and all are good options for a summery board. It's also hard to go wrong with brie and gouda.
The cheeses and meats are the most important, and salami is an all-around good option with which you can't go wrong.
For fruit, you're really just limited by what's in season. This time of year, it's grapes, blackberries, watermelon, peaches and blueberries, among others.
"It's a little bit of everything I want on a board that everyone gets to enjoy but me," Lawless said.
It's easy to make charcuterie board's seasonal with a few minor additions or changes. For Halloween, you have bat-shaped cookies and she used brie to make little mummies. For St. Patrick's Day, she likes to use Guinness cheddar, which is made with Guinness beer and has a unique marbled look. Christmas, something like s'mores works great, candied pralines
Charcuterie doesn't have to be confined to a board. She recently made 80 charcuterie cups for a client.
"When it comes to cups, the dry nuts and berries are the base, and I kind of like doing little skewers too," Lawless said. "It's like a grab-and-go, easy picking thing. Nothing messy. A chocolate pretzel, maybe. And then there's still the flowers and the oregano."
As for the main course, a caprese skewer — matza ball, tomato and basil — is hard to resist. Pralines, nuts and granola give it height, she added.
"Whatever comes to me is what I make it out to be," Lawless concluded.
She and a friend started to make the board for another friend, then the other half of the partnership dropped out to follow other work opportunities, and she's kept it going herself.
Along with some regular clients and recurring events, a lot of calls come from residents looking for something simple for a date night or evening social and people vacationing in the area.
"If I let this take off, it'll really take off," she said.
From her perspective, there seems to have been a lot of pent-up demand for charcuterie boards that wasn't being met. The demand still isn't filled, judging by the number of requests she gets.
When looking at other companies' work to get ideas, she reached out to a few with questions. Since then, both established and newer charcuterie board companies have started contacting her with some of the same questions she asked as a beginner.
"There's a lot of companies that have started following me and reaching out for ideas as well. It's like a little community," Lawless said.
