Queso Menonita.

Across the dry lowlands of Santa Cruz, dozens of Mennonite colonies — men and women of the field, in the words of one producer — run dairy herds and make cheese, and their pale, supple table cheese has become a Bolivian kitchen staple.

It's the classic melting cheese for cuñapé, the chewy cassava-and-cheese roll of the eastern lowlands, and for the many baked and fried breads and snacks that want a mild, generous melt. It belongs to the same wider family as Mexico's Mennonite cheese — queso Chihuahua — carried and adapted by the same austere farming tradition; the Bolivian version is its own everyday article, born of Santa Cruz milk and colony dairies.