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Directions
Information from the 1996 Old Farmer's Almanac, "What You Can Eat To
Achieve True Peace of Mind", by Ken Haedrich
The vanilla orchid is a member of the plant family known as
Orchidaceae and is the only orchid that produces edible fruit. The
beans grow on a thick vine that flourishes in warm, moist climates
within 25 degrees of the equator. The vanilla plant begins to bear
fruit when it is three or four years old. Eight to nine months after
pollination, the beans are golden yellow and ready for harvest and
curing.
It takes about five to six pounds of green, freshly picked vanilla
beans to make one pound of properly cured beans. There are basically
two ways to cure the beans: in the sun or over a fire. Using the
solar method, beans are spread in the hot sun by day and wrapped in
blankets and placed in wooden boxes by night. The sweating process is
repeated over and over for six months, until the beans have lost up
to 80 percent of their moisture content. This method produces
superior results and is used in Madascar, Mexico, the former Bourbon
Islands, Tonga, and Tahiti.
The wood-fire curing method, used in Indonesia and Bali, takes only
two or three weeks, but produces a dry, brittle bean with a smoky
flavor, generally considered inferior.
When you buy a vanilla bean at your market, the black, oily, smooth
pod you're buying is a cured bean. When you purchase a bottle of
pure vanilla extract, you're buying beans whose flavor components
have been dissolved in a solution of water and alcohol. By law, pure
vanilla extract must contain at least 35 percent alcohol by volume.
Anything less is labeled a flavor. Pure vanilla extracts come in a
variety of folds, or strengths. The Food and Drug Administration has
established that a fold of vanilla is the extractive matter of 13.35
ounces of vanilla beans to a gallon of liquid. Strong, pure extracts,
such as four-fold, are primarily used in mass food production.
What about imitation vanilla? ~----------------------------
Not only is pure vanilla expensive, but demand also far exceeds the
world's supply of the real thing. Stepping in to fill the void is the
chemist, who has come up with a variety of imitations made from
synthetic vanillin, the organic component that gives vanilla its
distinctive flavor and fragrance. Most synthetic vanillin is a
byproduct of the paper industry, made by cooking and treating
wood-pulp effluent. But since vanillin is only one of more than 150
flavor and fragrance compounds found in pure vanilla, the chemist has
yet to match the subtlety with which Mother Nature has endowed the
real thing.
How to tell a good bean when you see one.
Servings: 1 info file
About Vanilla Beans Recipe brought to you by Recipe Ideas
Categories: Bean; Vegetable
The History of Recipes
It is quite possible to track the history of transcribed cooking instructions back into antiquity, at least as far back into recorded history as the Egypt of the Pharoahs, and maybe further still. In practice though, sadly, these old recipes were just very basic hieroglyphic recipes for food preparation.
The truth of the matter is, the oldest recipe found, according to historians are some tablets in ancient Sumerian which recount the preparation of bread which is then used to make a drink, quite possibly a form of beer as it is recorded as making people feel exhilarated. Progressing into The time of the romans around 25BC a man called Apicius compiled a collection of scripts describing recipes prepared by the Romans. In his publication, he tells us how the meals were divided into appetizers, entrees and desserts, a style of dining still practiced today. Additionally, he tells us how the early Romans were skilled in the use of a wide range of aromatic flavours, including some familiar names like basil, mint and parsley. Later, in the 15th century, the Crusaders brought back many foods and spices from the East, including coriander, basil and rosemary. The introduction of these new tastes created an outbreak in books on cooking, many of which are kept safe in private collections. By the advent of the 1900s, cooking books were in great demand, as a result of increased literacy, more leisure time and having more money. Like it or not, the introduction of TV brought us TV cookery programs and the demand for the spin-off recipe books. Which brings us neatly to the present day and the invention of computers and the internet, permitting everybody to access massive numbers of recipes just like those on our site. |
We hope you enjoy this About Vanilla Beans recipe.
