DESCRIPTION
Product: Vanilla Pods
Latin Name: Vanilla planifolia
Plant Family: Orchidaceae
Other Names: Bourbon Vanilla, Flat-Leaved Vanilla, Tahitian Vanilla, Common Vanilla, Mexican Vanilla, Réunion Vanilla, Tahiti Vanilla, Vainilla, Vanille, Vanille de Bourbon, Vanille du Mexique, Vanille de Tahiti, Vanillin.
Description: Our Vanilla Pods are a wonderfully fragrant ingredient to add to custards, desserts, cakes, sweet sauces, confectionary and biscuits, harvested from the finest vanilla plants from Indonesia. Vanilla is a very evocative spice, which as well as creating delicious aromas and flavours, can also trigger memories of days gone by. Vanilla is a perennial, herbaceous tropical climbing vine native to Mexico, also cultivated in Africa and Indonesia which reaches a height of up to 10 metres. The vine attaches itself to host plants via its long fleshy aerial roots. The leaves are alternate, dark green in colour, linear, fleshy, and form in the nodes along the stem. The 5-petaled flowers form in clusters and are greenish to creamy-yellow in colour, approximately 5cm in diameter with a trumpet shape in the centre. The flowers last for a day then the petals drop leaving behind the seedpod which is known as a bean, the pods green when immature, ripening to dark blackish brown, once ripe they are heavily fragrant with the scent of vanilla.
SUGGESTED USE
For best results store your vanilla pods in a cool dark place. To use, slit the vanilla pod open down its length, and scrape out the small, sticky seeds using the tip of a small, sharp knife and add them to your recipe. Left over pods can be placed into a container of sugar to make vanilla sugar.
Use the vanilla pods to flavour milk based puddings such as ice creams, crème brûlée and custards, they can be added to chocolate and sweet bread recipes, cakes and biscuits. The pods can also be soaked in vodka to make your own vanilla extract, or ground to add to sugar.
SHELF LIFE
Shelf life of two years provided that goods are stored in an airtight container in ambient conditions.
