Vanilla Bean

Vanilla beans or pods grow on a fleshy tropical orchid native to Mexico and Central America. The beans are picked when immature and yellow and are then sun-dried for up to several months, during which time they ferment and develop their familiar brown, wrinkled appearance and rich, mellow tobacco-like aroma. Each bean produces thousands of tiny, highly fragrant seeds that, along with the pod, add an exotic, intense and characteristic flavour to food, a flavour particularly suited to dessert work, confectionery and chocolate. (It’s no coincidence that in the sixteenth century the conquistadores returned to Spain with hauls of cocoa as well as vanilla beans!)