Roasted Tamarillos

June 1, 2004

Along with a hundred or so other people, I had breakfast with British restaurateur and TV chef Rick Stein recently. He was in New Zealand promoting his latest book Food Heroes - A Second Helping. The New Zealand Guild of Food Writers decided to organise a breakfast including our own local "food heroes‚" and the guest list quickly burgeoned as news got around.

Stein is one of my personal food heroes. He has a passion for seafood which he (rightly) maintains should be fresh and simply cooked. There is nothing worse than fish past its best labouring under a mask of thick, cluggy, flavourless sauce or a fine piece of fish fighting so many competing flavours, its own subtle taste is lost.

His food heroes are the people up and down Britain who specialise in good local produce - cheese, cider, specific vegetables, cakes. The foot and mouth and BSE scares forced many a local farmer to find ways of supplementing their incomes in the face of declining demand for meat.

Our local food heroes provided some of their specialties for the breakfast, which was prepared by the chef and his team at the Hotel Intercontinental. There were lovely rolls and pastries, little sausages, preserves, organic produce, coffee.

One of the dishes included cooked tamarillos and these inspired me to make today's dish as a light dessert for a family dinner.

Tamarillos are red, egg-shaped fruit, formerly known here in New Zealand as "tree tomatoes‚" until someone thought up a more exotic name for export purposes. They are in season from April through to about December. They can be eaten raw or cooked. The skins are bitter and aren't eaten so tamarillos are usually cut in half or topped like an egg and the flesh scooped out with a teaspoon, with or without the addition of a little sugar.

They can be peeled like tomatoes - by steeping in boiling water before removing the skin. For today's recipe, the skin is left on, but the flesh is scooped out for eating.

Roasted Tamarillos

9-12 tamarillos
3/4 cup castor sugar
1/4 teaspoon each cinnamon and nutmeg

Halve each tamarillo lengthwise and place cut side up in a shallow baking dish. Mix together the sugar and spice and sprinkle the sugar liberally over the tops of the tamarillos. Pour 1/2 to 3/4 cup water in the baking dish and bake at 200C for 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven, spoon the liquid over the fruit and set aside to cool. Cover and refrigerate till required.

To serve place 3 or 4 halves in each individual serving dish and top with a spoonful of whipped cream or the topping of your choice. I used sweetened thick greek yoghurt and some toasted slivered almonds for garnish.