Tamarillo ✦

Tamarillo

What it is

It was the tree tomato until 1 February 1967, when the New Zealand growers’ council adopted tamarillo — a coined word, part Maori tama, part Spanish amarillo — because the old name was costing them export sales. It remains a Solanum, and behaves like one: the skin is bitter and has to go, and the pulp reads savoury long before it reads dessert.

In the kitchen

Score a cross in the base and drop it into boiling water for thirty seconds; the bitter skin slips off exactly like a tomato’s. Salt it before you sugar it — it takes both, and salt tells you how much acid you are actually holding.

Goes with

Chili pepper Ginger Red onion Venison Lime Goat cheese Cinnamon White sugar

Same species

Bintje potato Black Krim tomato Bonnotte de Noirmoutier Chuño Datterino tomato Eggplant

In season alongside

Lingonberry Haskap Cornelian cherry Cranberry Damson Gooseberry

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us