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A Recipe for
About Vanilla Beans
There is no such thing as a little garlic. |
| A. Baer |
“Happy and successful cooking doesn't rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life.” |
| Georges Blanc, Ma Cuisine des Saisons |
Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on. |
| George Bernard Shaw |
This Recipe for About Vanilla Beans is one of thousands in the Recipes-to-go Bean Cookbook.
Other things are just food. But chocolate's chocolate. |
| Patrick Skene Catling |
If you enjoy this About Vanilla Beans Recipe - you should enjoy the recipe collections you can find on the websites below:
Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother's tasted better the day before. |
| Rita Rudner |
Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eating under a tree. |
| Elizabeth Russell |
This is a recipe for About Vanilla Beans from the recipe cookbook of Recipes-to-go (Bean)
Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates. |
| Fernando Pessoa |
Food Tip |
The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world. |
| Robert Orben |
We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. |
| J.B. Priestly |
Food Tip |
Food Tip |
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.
Serves: 1
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