A professional ballerina turned professional chef, who has just authored a cookbook in which Vanilla is the star! That announcement hit three of my hot buttons - dance, cuisine and my favorite flavour and aroma, vanilla. And as someone who turned to working in the arts after a thirty years in science, I was fascinated to learn about how and why a ballerina of 30 years duration became a chef. 

Vanilla - a lush sweet aroma and flavour that inevitably entices me to indulge in more sweet or frozen desserts, cakes and chocolates than I probably should. It's hard to resist those sweet treats.  But I hadn't thought much about vanilla in the context of a savoury dish, until I saw a listing of recipes from Natasha MacAller's Vanilla Table.