Vanilla in Tahiti
"Describing vanilla is like attempting to describe a color." Spice Sherpa
I have been reading The Signature of All things by Elizabeth Gilbert for my book group, and there is a small section in it about growing vanilla in Tahiti. Which reminded me of a holiday my husband and I had many years ago now at Club Med on the island of Moorea. One day we went on a tour of the island which included a vanilla plantation. So I hunted around and here it is - a small clearing in the forest where they grew vanilla. The attractive young man, is, I think, French from Club Med, not a native Tahitian but he could be a French Tahitian - there are lots of French who have settled there after all. And then I thought so why not do something on vanilla - with a little bit about Tahiti in the process.
In the book which is set at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century several of the characters make the long, arduous journey to Tahiti. And to a certain extent it is still true today that the journey is long and arduous. Well in modern day terms - it certainly doesn't take 18 months as it did in the book. However, if you are going to one of the lesser islands like Moorea or Bora Bora you will need to overnight in Papeete on the way there and on the way back and it isn't that short a flight to Papeete anyway. So in today's terms it is still pretty remote - which is perhaps why it still has that exotic aura about it.
There is no denying its beauty but it is a long way from anywhere - almost in the middle of the Pacific, which as Elizabeth Gilbert noted somewhere in her book, takes up almost half of the globe. Look at the earth from one side and it is practically all water. You can only just see the continents at the edges in this shot.
Maybe this is what makes it so exotic. It's remoteness - and to earlier times it would have seemed almost impossibly remote - indeed I often wonder how anyone ever found any of the Pacific Islands. They are not very large and impossibly distant from each other. Gauguin, is of course, the most famous example of a 19th century person seduced by the beauty of the place. And, I think, that in this particular painting he has included the vanilla plant - in the centre of the picture above the dog.
But vanilla. Yes it is grown in Tahiti still but it is neither originally from there, nor is it the world's best or biggest producer. That honour belongs to Madagascar which produces 80% of the world's supply - followed, by Indonesia - which may well be catching up, then Tahiti and the West Indies. It is an orchid. It is the world's most popular spice and its second most expensive after saffron. It originated in Mexico and was brought back to Europe by Cortes. But apparently Mexican vanilla today is not good and is often mixed with cheaper things, and besides they don't really grow it for export anymore anyway.
There is a legend about its origins too.
"According to Totonac mythology, the tropical orchid was born when Princess Xanat, forbidden by her father from marrying a mortal, fled to the forest with her lover. The lovers were captured and beheaded. Where their blood touched the ground, the vine of the tropical orchid grew." Wikipedia
Vanilla is so expensive because it is very difficult to grow and harvest. It needs specific conditions in which to grow - I gather that, like wine, the terroir influences the taste. You can't grow it from seed - it needs to be grown from cuttings. The plants take at least two years to produce flowers. Also those plants are trained up posts, or trees like a vine and bent back down or else they would grow too tall. I think that's right anyway. Certainly the ones in my original photograph were trained over another plant of some kind I think. The flowers only flower for one day and can only be pollinated naturally by a bird and a bee that are only found in Mexico. Which meant that although Cortes brought it back to Europe nobody there was able to produce any vanilla until in the nineteenth century they discovered how to pollinate it by hand. Which is how they still do it today. As you can imagine this is labour intensive. Indeed because best done by small hands child labour has been used in Madagascar which has caused a bit of a storm. Then after the pods are harvested - again by hand they have to be cured and dried in a rather complicated and, again, labour intensive, fashion that takes some 5 months to complete. Then, of course you have to ship it.
If you are making vanilla extract you have to soak the pods in alcohol. Vanilla essence is no good - a chemical concoction. So spend your money on vanilla pods and vanilla extract.
But the real thing is wonderful. It is used in perfumes as well as food, and indeed some people just use vanilla extract as a perfume. It is apparently the most popular smell in New York, though how anybody would know that I do not know. Usually though it is blended with other smells - indeed these days it's most likely a vanilla smell concocted from chemicals, although I did read that the more expensive perfumes do use the real thing. I didn't recognise any of the perfumes that were listed though.
As for food - well overwhelmingly it is used to flavour creamy things - like ice-cream and custard, but these days people are trying it out with other things. Mostly seafood it seems. As to the ice-cream, in spite of the foodies concocting all sorts of different and sometimes weird new flavours, vanilla is still king. I guess because vanilla, although it does indeed have a distinctive sweet taste, is bland enough to marry with other flavours and not overwhelm what it may be partnered with. Indeed at times you could be forgiven for thinking that almost anything sweet contains vanilla too.
And I simply don't understand why the word vanilla has come to describe ordinary uninteresting things - a vanilla life, a vanilla relationship - can't really think of any examples, but you know what I mean. Maybe it's because its so ubiquitous. Maybe it's because it is so popular. Because it certainly isn't ordinary - or even bland. It's subtle and delicious and its story is complicated and exotic. Like tomatoes it is hard to imagine how cooks did without it before they knew about it.
So a couple of recipes to finish with.
Vanilla custard slice from Donna Hay - Vanilla slice deserves a whole post of its own. I'll do it some time.
Lamb rump with vanilla braised chicory and sorrel pesto - from Yotam Ottolenghi - for chicory read whitloff. Just to show that it can be used in savoury dishes too. This is what he says about its use in savoury dishes - and this one in particular:
"The use of vanilla in a savoury dish is not something we normally go crazy for. The common pairing of prawns, salmon or lobster has never fully worked in our minds but the sweet vanilla really does make sense here, alongside the bitter chicory."
And you know to keep a jar of caster sugar with a used vanilla pod in it don't you? This gives you wonderfully perfumed vanilla sugar.
Vanilla - expensive but essential. Beware imitations.
