Acid and Cheese

[liv4fud]

I have heard on tv and read in a few books that cheese and acid (citrus / vinegar, etc) should never be paired together. The result would be a bitter taste.

I had a personal experience with fresh mozarella (from jewel-albertsons) on which I tried to get some lime/lemon marinate artichoke hearts.

I do second the notion now. However - I don't know if you had the jalapeno poppers that BK used to sell. They were cheesy, they were spicy and they were tart. What am I missing here in terms of being cheesy and tart at the same time? (I do miss them - but that's another question)

[phatch]

Cheese is used in salads with vinaigrettes, in pizza with tomatoes, in Saganiki drizzled directly with lemon, Parmesan with balsamic is classic and the balsamic is equal in acidity to many other vinegars. Mexican food often dresses a cheesy dish with lime juice.

I think there are cheeses that wouldn't meld with acids, but there are plenty that can and do.

Phil

[Suzanne]

I'm kind of surprised to hear that. After all, one of the folk tenets of the wine industry is: Buy on bread, sell on cheese. Meaning that cheese, with its lactic acid content, works with the chemicals in wine to IMPROVE the taste of the wine by smoothing out the acidity. Then again, I have noticed what you're talking about between wine and blue cheeses.

And I'm pretty sure there are instances in which combining cheese and acid in cooking changes the cheese's melting properties.

L4F: maybe those poppers were made with pickled jalapenos?

[liv4fud]

believe I was trying to make a recipe in which giada(foodtv) had used tomato, basil and mozarella and using it on a grilled portabello

the flavors were pretty flat and to pep them up decided to use a squirt of lemon. that was when I started having a bitter after taste

and after using each separate ingredient with lemon - found out that it was with mozarella...

interesting note: alton brown in a recent episode did mention something about citrus (or was it acid ) and use with cheese (cheese platter episode). couldn't catch that in its entirety as my little one was giving out a huge holler at that time.