‘Hay queso aquí?’

Go into most cheese shops, and you’ll find a global array of creamy wonders, of many colors, textures and smells. But what seems to be conspicuously absent in the modern gourmet cheese pantry is Hispanic cheeses. These—of which the flagship product is the snow-white queso fresco—are almost entirely limited to Latin American groceries, where the circular cake-like wheels are generally kept in an unassuming spot and sold by the chunk, without pomp or circumstance, for about the price of flour.

Queso fresco—and its close cousins queso blanco and the firmer, more salty cotija—is a staple of Latin American cuisine and delicious almost any way you might serve it. Pure white and made overnight, the cheese can be as light and fluffy as tofu, with a creamy cool texture refreshing in a hot climate. Queso fresco is often used for crumbling over hot dishes, where the cheese softens without quite melting. It may also be stirred into sauces or served in tacos, but just eaten straight it can be delicious. A slab placed on a table and matched to dried fruits or honey won’t last long at a dinner party.

Hispanic cheeses—especially the prepackaged El Mexicano brand—are as widely available in California as Spanish is spoken, but in most grocery stores it’s kept in a Mexican food section of a cold case, separate from the other cheeses of the world.

I didn’t discover queso fresco until I visited Mexico about a decade ago. I had just finished college at UC Santa Barbara, and I tramped off to Baja California and spent 10 months hiking the coastline of the desert peninsula, fishing for my food, collecting cactus fruit and sleeping on the beach. It was a country of cowboys and fishermen, primarily, and I stopped every day at ranches and fish camps to ask for water from the well. The generosity of the people often put me in possession of handmade tortillas, avocados, fresh figs and dates.

One day early on, I was offered cheese. The lady of the ranch left me with her husband and boys on the porch while she went indoors and returned bearing a towel-wrapped slab of what looked like mozzarella. It was made that morning, she said, as she sliced me a piece and wrapped it up for me to take on the road. I fell in love with the light texture and cool taste, and I became an avid cheese-hound for the rest of my days in Baja. Subsequently, almost anytime I passed a ranch with goats or cows nearby, I always approached, made a quick greeting, and asked, “Hay queso aquí?”

Back home in California, I began seeking it out. Artisanal renditions can be found, like the queso fresco from Orland Farmstead Creamery. This cheese comes in 8-ounce packets and is available at S&S Produce and Chico Natural Foods, as well as the Saturday farmers’ market, for about $6 each.

But it’s more fun to visit small Mexican grocery stores—obscure shops stacked with mangos, bananas and imported canned goods and where circular cakes of snow-white cheese are often kept discreetly under the cash register display window or a similar location somewhere in the back of the store. At Panadería la Michoacana, a bakery/meat market/grocery in south Chico (1414 Park Ave.), they sell the ubiquitous 10 oz. El Mexicano rounds in the soda case, but you can also get queso fresco to order at the deli counter for between $3.49 and $4.29 a pound, so don’t be shy about buying an extra-big hunk.

At home, keep it cold or serve it right away. Remember that this is not the cave-aged hard cheese of Europe—durable food that can accompany travelers in a backpack and provide sandwich material for a week. Queso fresco is a product of a warm climate. At many desert homesteads south of the border, it is made overnight, eaten by day, and prepared again the next evening. In other words, it’s not meant to last without refrigeration. It’s meant to be eaten. Try serving it as part of a fill-your-own-taco buffet dinner—and afterward offer guests some honey to lather on the cheese for dessert.

The next time they return for dinner, they just might ask, “Hay queso aquí?”