How To: Grapes on Cheese Boards

Grapes go with cheese boards like no other fruit I know. But there are some tricks to doing grapes better on a cheese board and I'm going to share them with you. So the first issue is, you get a beautiful bunch of grapes. They look great. You tried one at the grocery store, when you weren't supposed to and you brought it and you washed it and you plop it on your plate. That's great, but people start taking grapes off and then what your cheese plate looks like is the underside of a thing of grapes. So how do you solve that?
Well, what you want to do is sort of recreate the look of having your little bunch of grapes here, but imagine instead that you have little bunches that this is built up on. So now, your guests can come and take a little bunch on their plate, and you can do that with the whole thing. As it sits there, it looks like this big glorious bunch of grapes. But as people take them away. It just looks like a slightly smaller glorious bunch of grapes. So it helps your cheese board look better longer than the first eight grapes that come off. Now, another secret for grapes is that, you know, they don't always look fantastic, maybe your option at the store they taste good but they're not like beautiful or maybe you had them from earlier in the week and you just like raiding your pantry you can make roasted grapes so this little beautiful bunch it. Now, it looks different than these. These are bright and fresh. We roasted them this morning and you can see that this little grape actually burst out of its skin and these are great. They don't taste like raisins, but if you think of them like a grape that's starting to become a raisin. That's kind of what we're doing, it intensifies those sugars in there and it makes a less-than-stellar fresh bunch of grapes become this really fantastic bunch of roasted grapes. How do you do this? Super easy. Pre-heat your oven somewhere between 375 and 400 degrees. Super simple. It's kind of the standard roasting and throws them in on a pan. And how long do you keep them in there? Well, it kind of depends on what you want.
If I was making little, personal cheese boards or cheese plates for a bunch of people, I think it's better when they get to the point where they're all sort of bursting out of their seams. And therefore I cook them longer. If we're serving this on a group board and people are going to take a bunch off, I would come in and cut those into smaller groups so they could take it but I don't want them all bursting because it will just be sticky and not as great. So it's a better experience since it's not as juicy as letting them in a little longer, so you're looking at somewhere between seven and ten minutes. The trick is to just look and see and if one or two of them have started bursting, you know you're pretty close and I encourage you to try it. No matter what you do with grapes, be the best grape you can be and add them to your cheese board with class.