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Ingredients:
 This spread is tasty, nearly effortless, and readily customizable to whatever herbs and spices you have available.
- One log goat cheese
- One large sprig basil
- Small handful of chives
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- Not In Picture: juice of 1/2 lemon
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Step 1:
 - 1/2 tsp dry mustard seeds
- 1/2 tsp celery seed
- 1/4-1/2 tsp kosher salt, not yet in the mortar
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Step 2:
 Start by removing the log of goat cheese from its packaging and placing it in a stainless steel bowl. Squeeze over the juice of 1/2 lemon.
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Step 3:
 Mash with a fork until the lemon juice is incorporated, which shouldn't take very long. Now, place the dry mustard, celery seed, kosher salt and dried chilis in a mortar and pestle the heck out of them. Make them into a fine powder, though a few tiny pieces of surviving chili seed are all right.
Leave those spices in the mortar for now and turn your attention to the fresh herbs.
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Step 4:
 Start by stripping the basil leaves from the stem. Stack them all together, stems facing the same way, and fold one edge over sharply.
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Step 5:
 Turn the fold into the start of a roll, and roll up all the leaves into one handy bundle of herbage.
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Step 6:
 Now that you've got a neat little tube of basil, take a very, very sharp knife and cut across the herbs. This creates tiny ribbons of basil - a chiffonade.
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Step 7:
 For the chives, simply gather them together...
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Step 8:
 ...and cut them into nice, small pieces.
Put the fresh herbs into the bowl with the goat cheese.
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Step 9:
 We have one more ingredient to work with. Inside this jar is a potent culinary weapon.
Preserved Garlic. I started doing this a few years ago when I came by some really inexpensive, good-quality garlic. I bought enough of it that I knew I'd never use it before it got old, so I looked around for ways to keep it in usable form. Many people and sites I consulted suggested using olive oil, but oils do nothing to counter the growth of botulism. Instead I chose soy sauce. High in salt, soy sauce preserves garlic for longer than it takes me to use it, doesn't allow anything untoward to grow in it, and adds a fair amount of flavor besides. The garlic itself gets much more aromatic, but the individual cloves become less intense. When this jar opens, everyone in the neighborhood knows about it. And boy are they jealous.
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Step 10:
 Just look at that. Beautifully brown, perfectly preserved and flavorful. These two cloves get minced fairly fine to help distribute the flavor throughout our spread.
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Step 11:
 Minced.
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Step 12:
 Now put everything into the bowl with the goat cheese,
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Step 13:
 And stir to combine!
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Step 14:
 Now this needs some time to marry flavors and become mellow and happy. Because goat cheese is so maleable, we can choose the shape of our final product. Nothing fancy this time, line a small glass bowl with plastic wrap.
Move the goat cheese mixture to the bowl and press it down. Try to get a nice, flat top so the cheese will sit flat when you unmold it for serving.
Now fold the plastic wrap over the cheese and put the whole thing in the fridge for a few hours.
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Step 15:
 When it comes time to serve, invert your goat cheese spread onto your serving device.
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Step 16:
 Serve with an assortment of crackers and showy fresh herbs.
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Step 17:
 Closeup of Herbed Goat Cheese Spread with Preserved Garlic.
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