Culinary Overview

My first culinary memory of vanilla was the flavor it imparted to sugar, butter, and eggs when we made cookies. Whereas my childhood friends craved the raw cookie dough, I liked the batter best before the flour was added, when the full, rich flavor of the vanilla was most evident. During our youthful baking sprees -- with our fingers in the bowl of ingredients non-stop -- it's amazing we had enough batter left to turn into cookies. More amazing is how quickly we went through the bottles of vanilla as I used no restraint in flavoring everything we baked. By the age of eight my passion for vanilla was firmly established.

In my early twenties a European friend taught me the Epicurean trick of putting vanilla pods in coffee beans or ground coffee. This helped to qualify me as a "gourmet cook" as no one else I knew had ever even seen vanilla pods. But it wasn't until I wrote The Vanilla Cookbook that I discovered just how incredible vanilla beans are and why they're worth the extra effort. And when I discovered that vanilla lifted and smoothed savory foods and gave them a secret sparkle, I was thrilled!

This section is dedicated to everyone who loves vanilla and wants to incorporate it in daily cuisine rather than just in cookie and cake batter or homemade ice cream. Each month I will introduce new recipes, chosen with the season in mind. We will have a new chef-in-residence on a regular basis. An archive of all chefs-in-residence provides you with access to all their special recipes and the tips they offer to make your experience with vanilla as enjoyable as possible.

• Chefs in Residence
• Vanilla Recipes

Photo by Mardeene Mitchell