-Adventurous eating doesn't always mean roasted grasshoppers and 1000 year eggs.-
“So I think I’m going to make a grape and lavender tart. I found a recipe on Martha Stewart,” I nonchalantly told BF.
“Grape and lavender? Why?” BF seemed curious about this one. It wasn’t the most straightforward recipe to be sure. In fact, I doubt he had ever seen or conceptualized a grape dessert before. It wasn’t like they were on the menus of every restaurant.
“Well,” I sighed, “to be honest it’s because, One: I’m intrigued by the idea of it. Two: It sounds kinda terrible to me but also sorta tasty. See, the idea of cooked grapes to me actually seems rather unpleasant. Grapes have a flavor that I think is best cold or even frozen -” I love to freeze grapes as a snack, “-and the idea of them being served hot just sounds groady. I imagine them tasting rather sickly sweet and having a texture of hot boiled mash with nasty strings of curled grape skins.”
“I assume the lavender is a part of this, too?”
“Exactly. Lavender is a tricky food. Few people can cook with it well and fewer even know how much to use when they do. I’ve had great experiences when it was used on a turkey as part of a salt rub and enjoyed some whipped cream touched with lavender, but other than that… I dunno. It’s quick to go from floral fragrance to being snuffed out with the fume of a grandmother’s panty drawer.”
“Ew.”
-The grapes I used were Flame, Black Emerald, Champagne, Obsidian, and Concord.-
“Yeah, I thought you'd like that comparison. So, this is just a grand experiment to see if I can get myself to like both cooked grapes and try lavender in a new way. Hopefully it’ll be awesome. It may just be alright. Possibly, it may taste like the sins of a used up, overly made-up, tranny hooker baked in a pie crust.”
“Nice,” he said and turned to leave the room.
“Ha ha! Man, I am on a roll today.”
This wasn’t my first stroll down this particularly unusual avenue of cooking. I had traveled this route many times, mapping out my various culinary distastes and challenging them in all sorts of ways. Too many jaunts down lima bean alley left me to realize that I simply don’t care for them in any way, and that I had my mother’s terrible and overcooked turkey soup to blame for this. A surprise run-in with Brussels sprouts and its retinue of Parmesan cheese and garlic showed me just how much I enjoyed the little cruciferous’ company on my plate. I have had enough encounters with spaghetti squash to know that given the chance I would lock them all up in a cell and throw away the key, the nasty little things. I attempted cooking with eggplant once years ago after being more than a bit nervous of them. These days we’re the best of friends.
So I would try with grapes and lavender.
