Nothing plain about the miraculous vanilla pod

Whenever I see single vanilla pods being sold for absurd prices in gourmet shops, I wonder who is buying them, and why such people like to pay over the odds. I'm lucky enough to have friends who visit places in which vanilla grows, such as Mexico, Hawaii and Tahiti, and bring some back for me, when they can. Nobody's ever given me Australian pods, but they are grown Down Under.

My friend's holiday souvenirs aren't enough, though, so I buy vanilla pods (also called vanilla beans) in bulk online, and split the order (and the cost) with a friend. The initial outlay is heart-stopping but the price per pod works out to be much cheaper than buying them individually in a Hong Kong store. The pods keep for many years when wrapped very tightly in layers of plastic bags and aluminium foil before being frozen. It takes only about a minute at room temperature for a pod to defrost.

If left to nature, chances are slim that vanilla pods would exist. According to Alan Davidson, writing in the Oxford Companion to Food, the plant's "small greenish flowers open early in the morning, for at most eight hours, and are pollinated, it is thought, exclusively by humming birds and melipone bees. The fruits - yellow-green pods up to 30cm long - develop within four weeks … Pollination of the vanilla vine is mysterious and only occurs unaided in Mexico, and even there only a small percentage of the fruits set naturally."

Fortunately, mankind has figured out a way to hand-pollinate the vine, and developed methods for steaming and fermenting the pods, so they turn from green and firm to brown, fragrant and flavourful.

To use the pod, split it lengthwise and scrape out the tiny, black seeds, which give an attractive speckled look to baked goods and custards, and add a lovely, subtle crunch. I like to dry the scraped-out pod and add it to a container of sugar. If I have a lot of stripped pods, I put them in a bottle of vodka or brandy, to make vanilla extract.

Davidson says that although synthetic vanillin "is chemically pure and can be up to 20 times cheaper than the real thing, it lacks … the 'peculiar bouquet' of natural vanilla". That's comparing imitation and real vanilla when tasted on their own, though. If you're using a small amount mixed in with a large number of other ingredients, it's not always easy to detect whether the "peculiar bouquet" is present or not.