One of the recurring posts I’ve often made here is “Gordon’s purely arbitrary cheese obsession of the week.” Now, I guess it’s not really “purely arbitrary.” Usually I have already decided to buy it for the store so of course I think it is really good. I just use that phrase so that folks who make similar cheeses won’t get mad thinking that I am claiming one cheese is the best when they feel they could make an argument for theirs.
And fair enough… some cheeses are more consistent than others, different cheeses appeal to different palates, some cheeses have 1000 years of history while some have a few months. No, I highlight these cheeses because I am personally obsessed with them at the moment. They are what I am buying for home, often multiple days in a row. Usually they are things I also think are a little underrated, though not always.
And this week, as a switcheroo, I am not even choosing a cheese for “Gordon’s purely arbitrary cheese obsession of the week,” I am choosing a butter.
When we did our store remodel last year, the cheese department took over the non-local butters. Part of the reason we wanted to do that, beyond evangelizing for the amazingness of butter, especially cultured butter, was this:
The Buerre de Baratte by Rodolphe Meunier is amazing butter. It’s churned, cultured, and full of sea salt crystals. It is deep yellow and even has a cow embossed on every wheel. I have been buying extra bread at home just so I can eat more of this butter.
I accidentally bought five tubs of this amazing creation last week for the store because I misread an email and though I was buying cases of the 250g wheels. Oops… not oops. We’ve been wrapping and selling these food-service intended beauties and sampling it out like crazy. Customers are blown away when they try this, partly because they don’t often get offered samples of butter at a cheese counter.
I’m writing this on my day off, but I am thinking of going to the store just to buy more of this today.
Gordon ("Zola") Edgar 