By Joel Denker
“Do you use vanilla in any of your dishes?” the inquisitive writer asked the chef of the Dupont Circle eatery known for its eclectic menu. Brian Nance, who runs the C.F. Folks kitchen, showed me a blackish pod that resembled a string bean. Sometimes he uses the whole vanilla bean in Basmati rice or as flavoring for sweets like pear crisp. Brian took out a vodka bottle from the cupboard and pointed to a bean steeping, “macerating,” in the alcohol. With his homemade, amber-colored vanilla extract, the chef makes a rum butter sauce for a grouper summer special. In this age of vanilla chais and lattes, it was refreshing and even a bit startling to see the actual, tangible fruit, from which the aromatic spice derives.
Climbing as high as a hundred feet and clinging to tree trunks, the vanilla vine, a member of the vast orchid family, twists upward in the Gulf Coast jungles of Southeastern Mexico. Long before the Spanish conquest, the Totonac Indians were fascinated by these “green garden hoses,” to use anthropologist Sophie Coe’s image.
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To learn more about vanilla, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
