The Deal-Breaker.

In the same way that I will cook, order or consume almost anything that contains peanut butter, there is conversely a deal-breaker: an ingredient that will put me off an otherwise-appetizing dish for no good reason. Or at least, reasons that only seem reasonable to me. That would be DRIED FRUIT in any savory application except for salads. (In a salad, I am perfectly thrilled to encounter a dried cherry or cranberry or blueberry, but oddly, not a raisin. Blergh.) If there are sultanas or currants in, say, a delicious curry, I will leave them out. It's mostly a texture thing. Fruit that has been dried and then reconstituted in a liquid or sauce skeeves me out. The skin is sort of baggy and the fruit is flaccid, like the miniature internal organ of some wee disgusting creature. The sac bursts disconcertingly in one's mouth, releasing a frisson of discordantly sweet glop amid an otherwise perfectly-enjoyable meat dish. Plus, there is the whole logic breakdown involved in drying out a piece of fruit only to re-moisten it later on. I could understand this if refrigeration were not widely available. And intellectually, I suppose I get the idea of dessicating the fruit and then REPLACING its fluids with whatever liqueur or what have you that you've decided to macerate it in.


This is also one of those realms in which the sweet-savory boundaries are more strict for me. When I was dating my now-husband and trying to impress him with my mad cooking skillz, I made him a dinner of pork tenderloin with an accompanying compote-type sauce made of Italian plums despite my sister Catherine's dire warning: "Guys don't understand fruit with meat." She thought that my presenting my man with pork and plums together, I would make his head explode with the incongruity of it all, he would be unable to wrap his head around the illogic of my creation, and then he would dump me, none of which happened. However, I still won't eat creepy little raisins. You can't make me.