Preserves vs Condiments

Many a learned writer of recipes has devoted an entire volume to the subject of preserves, which may include such diverse recipes as strawberry jam, pickled onions and harissa. I have chosen these three examples to illustrate a point, several points actually. Firstly, there are four basic preserving methods (beyond bunging it in the freezer) and these are salt, sugar, vinegar and oil. I've done a bit with salt and frankly, the quantity of water required to rinse it out afterwards in order to make it palatable in my opinion defeats the object.

As far as I am concerned the whole point of 'preserving' is to make things last beyond their natural expiry date in an energy and volume efficient manner, whereas 'condiments' are a tasty little morsel of something to make plain food more exciting.

So for instance; strawberry jam makes a plain slice of bread more exciting, but there was probably no need to make any unless you had either a glut of home-grown strawberries or you went bonkers at the PYO farm when they were practically giving them away. Similarly, pickled onions might make a cheese sandwich more exciting but onions can keep perfectly well all by themselves without having to put them in glass jars filled with spiced vinegar.

And my point is? Mr Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Mr Oded Schwartz are both self-proclaimed 'masters' of preserves, but as far as I can see what they actually do is write nice little recipes for home-made condiments to make your pantry cupboard look that little bit more sophisticated.

Hugh F-W says that for 50g of chillies you want to add 250g tomatoes, 2 fat garlic cloves, 50g shallots plus various spices, salt and oil. It can live in the fridge for 4 months or you can freeze it.

Mr Schwartz adds only oil and salt to his chillies but again he recommends keeping the finished paste in the fridge. Well sorry guys but this is the second time (so far) this year I have had a kilo of chillies to process and I am not going to keep them in the fridge. In my opinion that is not a preserve, it's a condiment. You can dry chillies for heaven's sake and not have to keep them in the fridge.