Thursday 26 April 2012

Ndali vanilla

If you've ever wondered what makes a sponge cake so delicious it's almost certainly down to the vanilla in the recipe which adds a richness and warmth to the flavour. My cousin Lulu Sturdy's vanilla, which she grows at Ndali in Uganda, has been described as the champagne of vanillas and once you taste it you will understand why. When you hold one of the moist, plump vanilla pods in your hand and breath in the heady aroma you will discover the sheer pleasure of finding a fantastic ingredient. It adds the most beautiful flavour to cakes, puddings and biscuits which will inevitably tempt you to want more...



Vanilla is an orchid vine, originally from Central America, and the only one of over 25,000 orchid species to produce an edible fruit. The vine needs to entwine a host tree and at Ndali they grow up mulberry, red hot poker trees and physic nut trees. The intricate vanilla flower has to be pollinated by hand using a pin or whittled stick to carefully lift out of the way the flap (rostellum) which separates the stigma and pollen-bearing anther; thumb and forefinger then gently squeeze these male and female parts together. The delicate work has to be done within eight hours of the flower opening, and has to dodge rain, ants and heavy hands to produce a successful conception.




Like a fine wine vanilla depends on perfect conditions. To flourish and produce truly aromatic beans vanilla needs a leafy tropical environment: plenty of dappled sunlight, buckets of rain, rich loamy soils. The vanilla bean is harvested 9-11 months after pollination: the longer the beans are left on the vine the better. 

As well as showing me her own farm, Lulu took me to visit a couple of the vanilla farms that are part of the huge Fairtrade co-operative she has set up with other farmers in Western Uganda. Her right hand man Sassu introduced me to the families who grow vanilla on these farms and I had a great time being entertained by the children and their billy goats and drinking tea. The difference Fairtrade makes to these farmers' lives is immeasurable. Ndali vanilla's success enables these people to have a quality of life that would be otherwise unobtainable; whether it's improved sanitation, better education for the children or starting up another small business of their own. All of this is achieved through Lulu's aim to build a network of farmers who meet the exacting standards of the Fairtrade certification. These farmers can expect to be paid double the amount of the average vanilla bean, so there is a direct correlation between the success of the Ndali vanilla brand and the lives of the people who live on these farms. You can view Ndali Fairtrade farmers on youtube http://www.ndali.net/youtube.html





We next visited the Ndali vanilla processing plant near where Lulu lives. This is where the vanilla is cured; turning it from the yellowish-green pod to the aromatic fermented chocolate-coloured bean. It takes three to six months and involves blanching the beans in hot water and sweating them in woollen blankets in wooden boxes. Over the weeks they are repeatedly exposed to hot sunshine and returned to their boxes for sweating, encouraging the breakdown of gluco-vanillin into vanillin through fermentation. It's a very time-consuming process and is over-seen by Lulu at every stage. Each bean is  meticulously sorted, graded and kept tightly packed in wooden boxes and the vanilla will continue to mature and improve in flavour much like a fine wine. 







You can buy Ndali vanilla from Waitrose and any quality supermarket and delicatessen in the UK. It comes in the shape of pods, intense extract or a wonderful new powder which is just about to be launched on the market. The glossy, plump vanilla pods that I smelt and touched at the processing plant at Ndali do not lose any of their intensity once they arrive on the shelves of the supermarkets over here and are bursting with flavour. It has been a really amazing journey for me to have tracked the journey of this beautiful and exotic spice back from my kitchen in London to the lush, verdant land below the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda.


www.ndali.net 

Thursday 19 April 2012

Trip to Ndali, Uganda



The first thing I noticed as my plane touched down at Entebbe airport at midnight was the hot, sticky heat. As soon as I was released from the safe, warm embrace of my British Airways flight I had to trust that all my arrangements would come good and that I would be collected by a driver and deposited at my hotel in Kampala, safe and sound. Travelling alone is simultaneously wonderful and nerve wracking as you have to trust everyone you come in contact with but at the same time have a well tuned antennae for any potential trouble. Luckily, my transfer went without a problem and I felt excited as we hurtled along the dark roads towards Kampala, windows open and breathing in the hot, African air. It was the start of my long-awaited trip to Ndali, Western Uganda, to visit my cousins Lulu Sturdy and Aubrey Price, who are the third generation to live on the family Estate. Lulu runs a thriving vanilla farm and Aubrey is installed in the beautiful lodge which he runs with his wife Clare.


I was quite relieved to arrive at my hotel Le Petit Village in Kampala and to slide into my nice comfortable bed under the mosquito net and get some sleep. I still haven't mastered the art of travelling light and I find that where ever I go in the world there's always far too much stuff I have to take with me. The problem is that I need all those little things which are essential to me if I want to feel reasonably self sufficient on a trip. I don't actually take loads of dresses, shoes and lotions and potions with me but I feel better if I can keep myself well dressed, relatively well groomed and clean. When I travel alone I always ask myself whether I feel ready for this journey. Can I cope with being alone in a strange country and how will I deal with the odd moments of insecurity? I always hope that it will be a rewarding and possibly life-changing experience so I set out with a mind-set that is positive but ready for the unexpected. I think that my yoga practise has really helped me to have a more flexible approach to life and I have developed a certain resilience and acceptance that although not everything will be rosy and to my liking I will try and retain a positive outlook. On this trip to Uganda I wanted to try and immerse myself in a life which has an entirely different rhythm from mine back in London and see whatever subtle shifts of perspective might happen. Having said all that, the one thing I have learned from past travelling is that my internal chatter travels with me and never goes away. The best I can hope for is that for the internal monologue to become less intense and for my mind to relax and become open to new ideas and experiences. That's why I like to travel.


It was the start of the rainy season in Uganda and on my first morning it was a little grey and overcast. Uganda is an equatorial country and the UV rays are among the highest in the world so I grabbed my sunglasses and hat and with the pervading heat I dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Aubrey strolled into the garden of my hotel and greeted me like a long lost friend. He introduced me to his wife Clare and we joined a bunch of their friends for lunch before setting off on the five hour drive to Ndali Lodge, near Fort Portal. We drove through numerous small towns and along bumpy roads and fast roads until we arrived at Ndali in total darkness. There's no electricity in this part of Africa at night time and it really is pitch black. There was no moon either but the sky was lit up by masses of stars and we each took turns to look at Saturn through Aubrey's powerful telescope at the lodge. Amazing! I slept like a baby through the night and woke up in the blissful surroundings of my own cottage. The lodge itself is set in a large garden and is positioned on the rim of an extinct volcano now forming Lake Nyinambuga,the most beautiful lake imaginable. I ate my breakfast on the veranda knowing that I had arrived somewhere really special. The bananas were tiny and delicious and mixed with pineapple and melon they actually made my taste buds tingle. The coffee was strong and very tasty. I was in heaven...


Over the years Ndali has become an almost mythical place in my mind. Our family had always been aware of this remote and extraordinary place in Africa where my uncle, Major Trevor Price had bought land in the 1920's. Travelling down from Cairo in a Model T Ford his aim was to grow tea - at the time a scarcely developed crop in Uganda. He planted a string of tea shambas north and south of Fort Portal and in the early 1960s he bought Ndali in the Kingdom of Toro - but the soil proved too alkaline for tea and the estate was left to grow wild. That was all a long time ago and during the Idi Amin regime all Europeans and Asians were thrown out and their land confiscated. However, in 1991 the new government led by President Museveni invited all dispossessed foreign landowners to reclaim their land. That's when my cousin Mark Price decided to start building Ndali Lodge with the help of a small group of investors and friends from Yorkshire. Sadly Mark died in 1998 which prompted Aubrey and Lulu to step into the breach and take over the running of the lodge and explore what might possibly grow well on the land.

When we were children Lulu and I played together but we hadn't seen each other for about 15 years. We've always kept in touch, one way or another, and now I had the perfect excuse to visit her at Ndali. The rich and intense vanilla in my cakes and biscuits is from her farm and it is this exquisite ingredient which makes them taste so good. Lulu has built up an impressive business from scratch with Ndali vanilla and has led the way for other local farmers in Uganda to grow Fairtrade vanilla too. Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream use Ndali vanilla in their ice cream and they recently commisionned some short films about how these farmers have invested their Fair Trade Vanilla proceeds into starting their own businesses  www.ndali.net/youtube.html

www.ndali.net
www.ndalilodge.com
www.teawithalex.com