This August 7-9, prepare yourself for a cheesy musical odyssey the likes of which you’ll be jazzed to hear about—culture: the word on cheese is partnering with Napa Valley winery Long Meadow Ranch to bring you Cheese Lands, your one-stop shop for cheesy treats at this year’s Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park! Each week until the event itself, we’ll dive deep into the six cheese and charcuterie plates we’ll have for sale; take a look at our main page for the full menu.
If meeting the people behind your favorite cheese magazine isn’t enough of a reason to come say hi at this year’s Cheese Lands, let us introduce you to two finger foods that’ll abate your hunger like nobody’s business: the French Butter and Baguette Plate and the Truffle Lover Plate.
Photo Credit: Formaggio Kitchen
Alongside flaky, crunchy sweet baguettes, we’ll be serving up Handmade Beurre de Barrate from famous French cheesemonger and affineur Rodolphe Le Meuniere. Highly recognized in the world of cheese, Rodolphe Le Meunier won the title of Best Cheesemonger of France in 2007 and World Best Cheesemonger at the International Caseus Awards the same year. At Cheese Lands you’ll find his crême de la crême of butters, Beurre de Barrate. This special butter is made through a French process where milk is soured with bacterial starter cultures, which develops flavor, thickens the cream, and jumpstarts the formation of butter globules. The buttermilk is then spun off, and the globules are creamed with a churning machine (either wooden or mechanical) rather than with a continuous centrifugal churn. What’s this translate to? Jonathan Gold, food critic for the Los Angeles Times, can’t help but sink into “the nutty, salty, umami-rich taste, like popcorn butter times 10.” Priced at four dollars a plate, this bread and butter almost demands coming back for seconds.
Photo Credit: “New Black Truffle Burrata by BelGioioso Cheese” | Specialty Food
We also have on offer the supremely addicting Truffle Lover Plate featuring BelGioioso’s Truffle Burrata sprinkled with sea salt and topped by none other than Long Meadow Ranch’s very own Extra Virgin Olive Oil. For only nine bucks you can listen to the smooth musical stylings of Elton John while enjoying the creamy goodness of burrata cheese. Don’t know what burrata is? Prepare to have your mind blown—imagine the perfect soft pillow of mozzarella, but inside is a little pouch filled with extra shredded bits of mozzarella, cream, and (in the case of this BelGioioso beauty) summer black truffle seasoning. Sounds good, right? Well it sure tasted good to the American Cheese Society, which awarded it Best of Class in 2014.
That’s it for this week’s Cheese lands preview—tune in next Thursday for the breakdown of our charcuterie plate!
Julian Plovnick
Julian is a die-hard dairy lover from the Boston area, working for culture this summer as an editorial intern. When not studying English at Vassar College, Julian can be found binge-watching Top Chef (quiz him on any season and he’ll know the elimination order, no joke), refilling his coffee IV, or researching new ways to incorporate ricotta into his life.
