YOUR RECIPES

- Tamarillos.

Tamarillo Pizza

Ann Kidd isn’t having much luck with tamarillos lately. She used to grow them easily from cuttings but a plague of psyllid bugs decimated them. Her Motueka garden, full of flowers and veges, is still Ann’s happy place though.

The idea for the recipe came from a regular customer at the fruit and vege department Ann once worked in. The key with this pizza is to use a thin, crisp base and not to overload it with toppings.

Serves as many as you like!

Homemade or store-bought pizza bases Sweet chilli sauce

Tamarillos, peeled (see tip) and sliced Fresh mozzarella, torn

Preheat the oven to 200C with an oven tray inside.

To prepare the tamarillos, put in a bowl and pour in freshly boiled water. Leave for 1 minute then peel off the skin. If the skin doesn’t come off easily, repeat the process. Spread some sweet chilli sauce on the pizza base, top with tamarillo slices and blobs of mozzarella. Season to taste.

Sprinkle the preheated oven tray with a scant amount of flour. Put the pizza base on it and cook for 10-12 minutes.

Tamarillo Ice Cream

Sue and Tim Falloon have lived in their Masterton home for 15 years. They have five raised vege beds in the garden, one of which is devoted to keeping their six grandsons in strawberries. They’ve tried growing tamarillos but have only gotten a couple of seasons out of them at best, so Sue sources tamarillos at the local market on a Sunday instead.

This recipe came from the late Kaye McIsaac and appeared in the Masterton Golf Club cookbook. It’s a total hit for the Falloon family; the grandkids love it in cones. You can also adapt the recipe to use any other fruit – Sue often uses her homegrown plums – or even chocolate chips.

Makes 1 litre

200g tamarillos (3 or 4), peeled and cut into chunks 1 tablespoon lemon juice

200g sugar

1 egg white

300ml cream, whipped

Put the tamarillos, lemon juice, sugar and egg white in the bowl of a mixer. Beat together for about 5 minutes, or until it resembles a meringue mixture. Fold in the whipped cream. Pour into a container and freeze.

Tamarillo Chutney

Sue Little and her husband John retired last year to a semi-rural property out of Rotorua where they’ve planted 40 fruit and nut trees, and put in a 24m by 24m garden. They’ve put in two tamarillo trees under the eaves. These are looking good nine months on, despite the frosts. Sue keeps the ant population down so they don’t encourage aphids. She uses pyrethrum on the leaves for white fly over late summer. They’re hoping to see the fruits of their efforts – literally – next year.

Sue can’t recall where this chutney recipe came from but she’s been making it for about 25 years now. She says you can cut back on the sugar a bit if you prefer it less sweet. It’s better when it’s made with red rather than golden tamarillos, but either work well.

Makes 10 cups

2kg tamarillo, peeled and halved (remove any “stones”) 1kg apples, peeled and sliced

1kg onion, sliced

1kg brown sugar

1kg white sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

50g pickling spices, tied into a gauze parcel

25g ground allspice

1.2 litres white or brown vinegar

Place all the ingredients in a pot and bring to the boil. Boil, uncovered, for 2 hours, then remove the pickling spices and bottle.

Rich Red Tamarillo Pork

Jenny and David Hercock have lived in their property on the outskirts of Feilding for three years. It used to be a nursery (the owners subdivided it when they retired). Jenny and David bought the three-quarter acres with the most trees and plants left on it, and have since added their favourite plants to the garden too.

When Jenny and David lived in Te Horo, they had six ‘Teds Red’ tamarillo trees, all heavy producers. However, the Feilding climate is colder, with heavy frosts and high winds, so no success with tamarillos yet. Jenny is persevering though, and currently has two ‘Teds Red’ trees wrapped in frost cloth in the most sheltered part of their section.

She feeds the tamarillos with tomato fertiliser, citrus fertiliser, fish blood and bone liquid feed, and Seasol plant tonic. Insects are dealt to with Yates Nature’s Way Insect Spray Pyrethrum. And, along with the frost cloth,

Sue Little finds that adding a red tamarillo into any fruit smoothie adds a freshness and tartness that transforms the flavour from just delicious to incredible.

Vaporgard is also deployed for additional frost protection.

Jenny found this recipe from a promotion by the Tamarillo

Growers’ Association in a newspaper. During winter, she serves the pork with French beans and either a cauliflower and potato bake or a kūmara-parsley-sour cream mash. In summer, she serves it with a red and green cabbage coleslaw and scalloped potatoes.

Serves 4-6

800g lean pork (such as stir-fry), cubed

¼ cup flour

½ teaspoon each salt, ground ginger, ground cinnamon

and curry powder

1 large red onion, finely chopped

½ cup red wine

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon brown sugar

¼ cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons tomato paste

4-6 tamarillos

10 pitted prunes

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Put the pork in a plastic bag with the flour, salt and spices. Shake well to coat the pork with the seasoned flour. Tip the pork into a casserole dish and add the onion.

Put the red wine, garlic, brown sugar, soy sauce and tomato paste in a jug or bowl and stir well to combine. Pour over the pork. Bake for 45 minutes.

Make a small cross in the end of each tamarillo with a sharp knife. Dip the tamarillos into boiling water then peel off the skin. Slice them and add to the casserole with the prunes. Cook for a further 45 minutes.