In our culinary catacomb, the unwary visitor is greeted by explosive kimchi, mould-capped pesto, tahini like concrete and a vat of vintage vinegars
“Does everyone,” the film critic Anne Billson asked on Twitter, “have an evil jar in their fridge?” To which surely the correct answer is: “Only one? Lightweight.” We have a whole fridge shelf dedicated to cursed jars, most much older than Billson’s best-before February 2021 rollmops. There’s a chutney from Christmas 2018, something dark and viscous in a honey jar that definitely isn’t honey and several pots of vegan pesto – a substance that inexplicably goes off quicker than mince left out in the sun – covered in some terrifying bloom. If the zombie series The Last of Us has taught us anything, it’s to fear anything fungal, so I’m not investigating further.
That’s just the tip of the evil jar iceberg. Having recently renovated our kitchen, we were left with three storage boxes stuffed with Satan’s condiments. The edible stuff has gone back in, and I use “edible” generously: raised in the kitchen of a man whose butter predated Brexit last time I looked, I take an extremely relaxed approach to best before dates. But that leaves us to confront the dregs, and the sticky, dusty truth about ourselves.
