TASTE BUDS: Vanilla (Rewind)

I am hungry for vanilla. Let me tell you, I'm like so excited.

My name is Evil Longoria and I am Myraon and.

Welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food.

On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages. So make yourself at home, Rachel, we just had the most ridiculously incredible day day, one of the most memorable days of my life.

I have to say, right, I know and I don't know. It's because we're geeky about food. So we're north of the port of Veracruz. We're in the region of the Toa Ors in English and English, which is the original region of the vanilla plant.

Yes, Pantla where we were today.

That region was known as the city that perfumed the world.

Yeah, that's so romantic.

The whole thing today was you're impregnated a flower.

I am a proud mother father of a vanilla bean. I am pregnated an orchid. Thank you very much.

You're gonna have a little vanilla baby, vanilla baby.

Mom.

You know you saw me. I was It was so nerve wrecking. And we're gonna get to the process because it's a hard process. But like you guys, first of all, I don't know if people understand vanilla anything vanilla, vanilla, flavor of vanilla, smell, vanilla in medicinal vanilla comes from a vanilla bean, m hm. And that bean comes from an orchid that grows on a vine. Yep.

Exactly when you look at the vanilla bean, split it up and it's all these teeny tiny little seeds.

So it is the most labor intensive crop. And like you said, it's a flower that grows from a vine. That's what.

It's the most incredible process that I'd read about it.

I read about it. I use it a lot. I always use vanilla beans. If I'm in the story, I buy a vanilla bean, and I don't know if you've noticed it, like thirty dollars.

Yeah, now do you understand why?

Now I have such an appreciation as to why vanilla is thirty dollars. Also, I've never bought vanilla extract that is chemical. I always read the ingredients because things can say natural vanilla extract and there don't come from avian and they don't come from the land, and there's nothing natural about it.

And now it's all chemicals. It's cal chemicals or caramel color. I mean, it's really important to read the label and the ingredients should be vanilla and alcohol. A few years ago, I made vanilla. I got a bottle of vodka. Okay, you made vanilla extra.

I made veilla extract.

Yeah yeah, added a ton of vanilla beans. And a year later it's ready. It's the perfect gift.

Oh yeah, little vanilla home of.

Mine, do that and give it to me. It was a perfect gift. I was like, this is a very gift.

But it's just it's an incredible process. I mean to when you're at the store and there's one thing.

Okay, looking at the agredients and seeing it and the vanilla.

Extract and just being like, oh my god, this is thirty dollars a bean, or this is twenty five dollars a bottle.

But you understand why.

I mean from that bottle, if you go to the farm where we were lucky enough to be.

It today, it's just un unbelievable. I want to we're going to talk about y'all. We're going to talk about our day today because it was really the entire process of harvesting of vanilla bean. But first of all, I want to start with like, I don't think if people even know the vanilla plant is native to Mexico, the tot Naas.

Because they were they were using it.

Talk about the the toto Nach mythology about it being a princess, right, because you know, the agave of tequila has a whole methought. Oh yeah, the god way way, and so of course vanilla comes from some goddess.

Of course, it just just to add to the to the romance.

Yeah.

So according to Totonac mythology, the vanilla orchid was born a princess who was forbidden by her father from marrying a mortal.

Ah.

So but of course she didn't pay attention to your father. So she fled with her lover that she adored, and they were captured and they were beheaded and their blood oozed out of their bodies and or headless bodies, and where the blood touched the ground is where the vines and the orchids grew.

My dream for everybody who's listening to this and people who aren't, is that they make this pilgrimage to Vanilla, because you know, you go to Verracuz, you have to drive three hours north to Babuntla, which is home to the Totonacs or Totonacas, which was this thriving civilization. When you drive, we're in the job. Banana leaves everywhere, Banana trees everywhere, right.

Rivers everywhere, the ocean.

It's super lush, lush, lush. And it was a thriving community because of its strategic location to trade routes, but also natural resources. There's jungle, there's rain, there's sea, there's fresh water, there's i mean all the natural the mountains, all of it. Here. We went to the ruins of it at that Heen Heen, Yeah, and that was fascinating and you can tell just by those ruins what a

And very little of it has been fifty percent, how many only fifty percent, that's crazy, has been excavated, So there's way more like, oh my gosh, you know, if we only knew, but this was, you know, the people in the civilization that really discovered.

Or first that we know of used vanilla.

Yeah.

People, Well, they first say there were the to cultivate the vanilla.

And when we were there at the Daheen yesterday at the ruins, we saw that ceremony of the men. The Yeah, it's about noon.

The sun is bright and hot and very very humid here in Papantla Ladakrus.

So if you could imagine, this is long pool, it's super tall, like yeah, I don't even know how many feet, but.

Oh god, hundred feet yeah, uh huh.

And five men. They're dressed in really bright colors or white glass, but bright red pants, and they have.

All sorts of slowly colorful ribbons and ribbons on their head, ribbies on their hats.

I see red and green and yellow and the blue.

So one of them is at the very top playing a little drum and playing the flute, and then four of them start at the very top, and once he starts playing the music, they start spinning down like birds, like rain, but also they represent the four cardinal directions.

Okay, all right, here they go.

You're hanging upside down, hanging from your ankles, and you're spinning round.

And so this is a ceremony that's been happening since pre Hispanic times, and there is this legend that at some point the gods stopped.

You know, giving people rain because people weren't paying enough attention to the gods.

So they were like, okay, here's your drought.

So the ceremony was created to appease the gods and bring the rain back so that the vanilla could thrive.

I think clanbad. Here's the crazy thing. Vanilla vines or plants only grow within a twenty degree band on either side of the equator because of the climate.

Yeah, chocolate as well, it needs to be hot. Well we know today it's hot and humid.

Yeah, it needs to be hot, humid, very tropical with that's why environment a great place for it as well, even though it's not native to Madagascar, it's just the climate, the climate. And then it's like, oh my gosh, like why, like what happened? You know, like what happened in Mexico.

It was abandoned.

It was abandoned. Yeah, it was a and there are farmers and people trying to bring it back, just like it's happening with corn and beans and all of these things. I love that there are still people that care, that are wanting to keep these traditions alive.

It's like you really have to take care of it to nourish the land, and just because these things just end.

Yeah, you know, and it's like what it's native to this region, but most of the Mexican vanilla that we can buy in the States is not Mexican.

It's not real vanilla. It's very easy to say.

Natural, right, but it's just it's one of the chemicals that they were talking about today in Mexico. Like their goal here is they want to become a leader again in production of vanilla worldwide because they feel like they're the best producers of the plants native to hear but the global market, the price is dictated based on production in Madagascar, lack of production of Madagascar, overproduction in Mexico. There's just so many factors. It's just a hard crop.

And now you know, Madagascar produces most of the vanilla in the world eighty percent, eighty percent of the world vanilla's produced in Madagascar.

That's insane. And there's so I mean, if there's a hurricane, forget it.

Well, here's the thing. So today, what Mike then I learned was so Verta Cruz or this region of Verta Cruz isn't hurricane written. It doesn't have hurricanes. And this particular region for vanilla is up against the mountains, so they've kind of been pretty protected because of climate change. The last two years they've gotten their first hurricanes and

It affects all of those people. The are livelihoods, you know.

So it's this entire cycle and everything it revolves around the seasons and the cycles. I mean only in April and it's you know, and it's on the vine for nine months, and it's just, oh my gosh, it's so delicate.

It's just so incredibly delicate.

One thing that I found so interesting and when it first made its way back to Europe and there was people, you know, writing about everything that was happening that they were finding here in Mexico or.

New Spain as they call it.

But there's this one doctor that was sent over, doctor Francisquernandez. He was sent over in fifteen seventy. He was here for seven years to record the observations of New Spain, and he describes six hundred plants. He describes vanilla. Vanilla steeped in water causes the urine to flow admirably. Vanilla warms and strengthens the stomach, diminishes flatulent. It gives strength and vigor to the mind. Heals female trouble, and is

That is a mouthful of descriptors. Yes, that is well, so it was the first viagara.

I guess. I mean you get pillow talk to this flower. It's so very interesting.

When we come back, we'll be learning all about the mysterious origins of vanilla. I don't know it's that mysterious, but they're romantic, they're very romantic, and why European colonists were confused for centuries about how to successfully grow it.

And you can listen to some of our observations at the plantation.

It gets a little sexy.

Sexy time, sexy time. I'm not gonna be this is not a spoiler, but somebody has sex.

Well, because I've always heard this is a funny story that the woman from the farms Gaya Gaya farms, Gya farms.

So this region for centuries was.

The only region in the world that produced vanilla. And originally it was pollinated naturally because the flower is a hermaphrodite.

It has both male and female male.

And female organs that's divided by a little flat So there is a little.

Bee called the Elasia bee.

Okay, that's a long, skinny bee that doesn't produce.

Honey money, and it only function is to pollinate, to pollinate.

The vanilla, and it goes into the male and then into the woman.

Yeah, that's it. That's all that bee does. But the bee is not around anymore.

It's they're trying to bring it back, trying to bring this feedback I had already read, and this is interesting that the bee that did that was the Mellipona bee. Mellipona bee. And I asked, and she was so funny. She's like, oh, the many bona, she said, she's Mossa. She's like the little cheese massa.

Be the little gossip by.

Bee that's like checking you out and seeing if you're pregnant, Like what's happening.

She's like the nosy neighbor that goes away.

But she wasn't the vollinator.

She has a vollinator.

She's just a nosy bee that wanted to see what was happening. Yes, but it's the.

Other one, the quiet, hard working bee that doesn't get the credit.

That it doesn't get the credit because it's the cheese mosa.

That loud one. She said, she's even Mazurita. She's even a little fatter.

This is so funny. Oh, the Gorrita one.

Because the band that we have today was the Vanilla Planetforma. But then there's another hype of orget that's the bobona that's a little bit bigger.

And the bee that's also.

Native to this region region, and the bee that pollinates the bonbona is the same type of beat, but she's a little more chubby, and she's just she's like the hardworking, she's very efficient.

She's like a little god to beat that.

She was so funny the way she said, she's your little little hardworking she's quiet, she does her job.

She pollinates, it leaps. Oh my gosh. But now, and this is the most fascinating thing to me, is that so because vanilla was native is native, was native to Mexico. When the Spaniards came and took it back to Europe, it made its way down into Madagascar, which is now today the number one producer of vanilla. But they realized they didn't have the bees to pollinate it. So how did they how did they plant it? How did they reproduce it?

Yeah, that's a crazy story because from Spain, like you said, it came for the concourse and it was so important here, I mean so important, I mean as important as you know you could say corn chocolate and vanilla nola, right, And vanilla was used to season their chocolate drinks and it was all uses to incense for their temples and sometimes they would mix it with gobald to, you know, for their.

So it was very very important.

Was it was very regal spice because it's so hard, such little productions, and it takes a year. I mean, there's only one harvest a year. So it was very special, very special.

So eventually from Spain, it made its way all over Europe, made its way to France, and the French conquered you know, Africa, Africa, so they brought it over.

In the nineteenth century.

But it was growing because it's a beautiful flower, it's a vine, but it wasn't producing any being beans because it wasn't being pollinated.

It was just like there, but it wasn't doing what they wanted it to do. So the person that figure out the way to hand pollinate the.

Vanilla because they don't have natural pollinators.

Because those little bees are only in this country, only in Mexico, only in Mexicanos.

Never they can have in Madagascar.

No, they could never.

Yeah, So was a young a twelve year old enslaved boy.

Named Edmund Lbs.

And this twelve year old child kickstarted a billion dollar industry.

Yeah, yeah, Well he's the one that figured out that he used a little stick to carefully join the male and female parts of the flower together, and today the method is still known as le Edmond Edmund's gesture.

Oh Edmund's gesture. Oh that's beautiful.

That's the poet, it's named after him.

It makes you think this is a twelve year old child who was clearly brilliant. Had he had the opportunity, he would have ruled the world. Rule the world, ruled the world.

Yeah, because of well you know again, I think you know, we talked about sugar coffee. Like, there are certain crops that lend itself to slavery, and vanilla was one of them back in the day because it takes almost three years for a vanilla orchard to balloom. Takes three years for the buyers to have a one flower, one flower, three years before it begins producing flowers, and then when the orchids finally form, the farmers have to observe them.

Really carefully and have to work quickly when.

The flower bud opens, right, and it's only in the late morning, and a single pollinated flower will only produce a single vanilla bean.

It's crazy, it's crazy. Yeah, and of course you know they needed a lot of labor.

Yeah, and that, yeah.

It requires labor.

The other thing I want so I want to go back and say, was how to do that? How to hand pollinate it? That's crazy, because but what I did today.

You were nervous. You were so sweating.

I was sweating.

I've shaken.

I think I needed my glasses because let me tell you, there's one month that the orchid blooms and we're here. How crazy that we were here for the pollinating I mean for the blooming's And not only does it bloom only in the month, it booms only two hours a day.

And if it's not pollinated, it.

Dies, and it dies, it dies, So you missed the whole year, Like your whole harvest is ruined if you do not. And there's how many buds, I mean thousands, thousands and thousands and thousands of these little orchid buds. Yeah, and they all open at different times, So this one might open today, five might open tomorrow. So these vanilla producers go every day in the morning because that's when it opens. If it opens that day, and you have to find one of the orchids that it's open you

But you're following tube to work.

That's what I did today. So you did. Okay.

So I'm here with Eva. We're we're in a vanilla field.

We just have to describe what we're seeing. First of all, this is the most peaceful greenhouse I've ever been in.

It's so beautiful and it's it's it's amazing. It's a little bit of cloudy today. Yeah, and you could hear.

The birds, which she says affects whether they open or not.

Okay, that's right, I heard her say that, So it doesn't they don't really, So there's not a lot open today, right because it's such a cloudy because it's do cloudy.

They need the sun.

But it's beautiful.

It's this like orchids orchid.

It's this yellow orchid with these and these thick green vine.

They look like succulents.

They do.

They're really thick, really really thick leaves. Yeah, they're really thick.

Leaves, and yes, this flower, one flour produces one being being.

I just pollinated it. I just impregnated the bean with this little stick. It's a little wooden stick just for you guys to get a feeling of where we are. This is. This is a very.

Small production here organic.

She doesn't use any chemicals, and there are people that do this process one orchid at a time, and so with this little stick. I was very stressed by the way. I wasn't even breathing, but really really fascinating how it's made and it's endemic to this region.

And it's endemic to this region in Vera Cruz, the land of Vanilla. Yeah, amazing, it's beautiful.

I want this plant in my home.

So how did you impregnate it?

We have to slice it open, and that's the male organ right here and the females underneath it. So you scrape it and smash it down. We'll not smash It's very delicate.

You have to be delicate like.

A woman, and is nine months nine months for this baby.

That is amazing to me.

I can't imagine doing that at thousands and thousands of times in one harvest.

No, well, you said, can I have a glass of wine, like, oh.

Did I just have sex? Did we all just have sex?

I'll just experience this together. Concentrations.

It was crazy. It was crazy to think I did one. I mean how many they have to do a day within a month.

Yeah, and each one, each flower produces one vanilla bean and in nine it ripens in nine months, right, and then they pick the bean and then it's a whole other, like process, a whole other, like one hundred.

Days to get the vanilla bean that we buy at the store.

Don't go anywhere hungry for history will be right back.

I mean, obviously you love vanilla. I what do you make with vanilla? Do you everything? Bake with it?

Do you everything? My famous cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving is made with vanilla bean. Like you have to cut two vanilla beans. You have to scoop out the beans, you put it in and then you throw the two beans in there. It's my poached pair cranberry sauce. So it's like poached pears in this cranberry sauce of citrus and vanilla.

That sounds delicious.

Oh, it's amazing. It's in my cookbook. And then the other thing I make vanilla bean ice cream. And that's my favorite thing because you see all the little seeds against the white. I don't get vanilla ice cream. I get vanilla bean ice cream. Yeah, and a little goes a long way.

Yeah, they're vanilla there. Today I had a moment with this vanilla. I got a little emotion with.

The ice cream.

Yeah.

My dad used to like Hoggan does vanilla ice cream.

That was like his thing.

Every day after every meal, he had to have a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

And I was just standing there outside. Was it vanilla bean ice cream? It was vanilla? It was there vanilla bean ice cream?

Or was the one that my dad he liked any cri but yeah, vanilla bean, yeah, especially and he used to make ice cream all the time. But yeah, just looking at it and just being out with the birds and the heat and there's the moment and just eating this, I was like a little bit like I had to walk away.

I was just like, oh my god, this is just this is life.

Yeah, it's just so and it's amazing how a flavor could just trigger so many emotions, so many memories, and so yeah, I love vanilla. Just whenever I use the vanilla bean. I always stick the I used, you know, the seeds.

I put it in my sugar. So my sugar every time I open up my sugar smells like vanilla.

What I'm gonna do that?

I just start doing.

It is such a great idea, you just put it in there. I usually cook with the vanilla bean. What do you use vanilla for? What do you cook it for?

You know what I love to make.

I love to make medalanes, French medalanes. I make a brown butter with the vanilla bean with the seeds. And I love to make ice cream as well. And I love to make flan, vanilla fla vanilla flan with the vanilla seeds.

Those are the main things I do with me. Nola, the flam the ice cream.

Well, what recipe did we learn today? I was like, this doesn't sound good. I don't know about this was vanilla cream chicken. Oh my gosh, And let me tell y'all, I'm making that the minute I get back home.

It was delicious.

It was delicious because it had like twelve sticks of butter.

Yeah, helps, But it wasn't sweet because you, like you said, vanilla is not sweet. Vanilla is vanilla Yeah, vanilla's bitter. It's its own thing, its own thing.

Yeah, you guys, we had this creamy chicken which was basically like any cream based broth because it was heavy cream.

Here they used natha, which is the fat of milk. Right, so I think we can substitute with heavy cream.

I think we can subst to do with heavy cream. I don't know if crumb Fresh would be too heavy. No, no, I think it would be heavy.

But it does have a crim fresh feel in the sense of crim fresh isn't sweet. It's a little tart, but not that isn't tart, isn't it?

Crumbfresh is tart.

Yeah, you're right.

I would probably use heavy cream maybe like she used cream. She used cream, She.

Used cream, and oh no, wonder it was so good, So what what the fat? Could we substitute it with?

Maybe a little crumb fresh or a little ricatta?

Ricotta?

Ricotta, it's ricotta. It's the ricotta, yeah, because it's very mild. Yes, but it's cream like we don't have in La. We don't have nata in La, but ricotta rikatta.

It is exactly ricotta. So heavy cream ricotta, sawtate on and butter. You pour that and vanilla bean and you put that in a blender and you cook it with the chicken and it just comes out wow, amazing. But then the tortillas is like the Pieta resistant vaniadas, which were vanilla in chiladas.

It's like an enchila, but instead of it putting in chile. Yeah, she put it in the cream and the vania. So the n viniadas, and it was their family recipe.

It was so generations old. Yeah. It was so down good and topped with vanilla powder. Yeah, vanilla powder, which I've never seen. Yeah, I mean they sell that at the STO. Yeah, I haven't seen it, only seen extract and bean and the beans.

Yeah, they do have it, and they have the paste. I've seen it.

Yeah, Oh my gosh. It was so good. And then we had platanos plantains in a vanilla liqueur flambei for dessert with vanilla bean ice cream on top. So the vanilla bean ice cream just melted on top of these vanilla la cour plant It was the best meal, the best ever.

I'm never gonna forget today.

Yeah, I swear like seeing vanilla has been like a lifelong dream.

Oh I know, me too.

And today it was like what a memorable experience, like once in a lifetime, everybody has to come see vanilla.

Wow.

Yeah, if you can, Yes, I would encourage buying Mexican vanilla just because I'm Mexican.

Yes, and to support to support our people's.

What are peoples, but also it's it's endemic to this country, to.

This country, and they're trying to bring it back.

They're trying to bring it back. Yeah. Okay, well you know what we should do, y'all. We're going to post this recipe. Yes, we our version of.

It, our version of it. We'll figure it out.

We'll figure it out, we'll test it, and we're going to post it for you guys. But until then, I hope you have a vanilla latte. I hope you have a vanilla ice cream. I hope you have a vanilla dreams dreams. When people go, oh, it's so, that's the worst metaphor for boring, because there's nothing boring about vanilla.

On the contrary, vanilla is so incredibly complex and exciting. It has just stories and stories and layers and layers, and it's so yeah, history hungry for history. Wow.

Thanks for listening everyone, Thank you.

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