This morning at the grocers, I came upon a curious new fruit.
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Oblong, red-yellow, with a thin browning stalk and a shriveling calyx that exposed a flower-like orange patch beneath, it looked a bit like a large date. Only not. I asked the man behind the counter, organizing bananas in stacks.
Mara-thakkali, he said. Tree Tomato.
How do you eat it? I asked.
All it needs is cutting, he replied, with surety.
I wondered still if he really knew, but then again nobody else really did either. The checkout girl named the fruit confidently, but shook her head and blushed when I asked if she’d tried it.
So it’s called a “tree tomato” because it’s red like a tomato then? I joked.
Another woman at the checkout, a customer and a foreigner, laughed: perhaps you’ll tell us what they are like then? she suggested.
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Soon after, a post from NPR on food illusions and deceptions. Change your plate size and your portion will seem larger. Get taller glasses and you’ll will them with less, but feel like you have more. Use red dye to color your food. Color affects taste; we expect red things to be sweet. Insights derived from Josef Delboeuf’s work on visual illusions in the mid-1800s.
Really? I thought, thinking of the hot red of red chillies while fingering the more plum-like body of the tree tomato, wondering what my perceptions of color and shape and relative size were leading me to expect of this pretty little sunset-hued fruit.
It’s a tamarillo, I learned later via google, native to Peru and Chile, also known as tomate de árbol. Fruit of a hardy little shrub that’s easily cultivated from seed. Grown commercially in New Zealand and California, but used in South East Asia and known even in Nepal, mainly in chutneys and similar sauces, or to flavor drinks and desserts. Not a true tomato, but once cut so similar in internal structure. Were it not for the color variation, moist orange flesh hugging square ruby-red seeds, you could have fooled me.
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The taste, however, gave the fruit away. Tart, almost bitter, even slightly piquant. Resonances of tomato, yes, but also of that other fruit whose hard, dry exterior gives way to a mass of secret juciness: the passion fruit. Left to me, I’d call this the passion tomato, since its not-quite-arboreal origins indicate so little about its taste. And because its taste is such that I imagine it would draw out the intensity of heat or heighten sweet ingulgence.
If there are more left at the grocers this evening, I know we’ll be trying the savory combinations tomorrow. [And calling Shari Ann for instructions on how to save the seeds.]
Right now though, it seems just about the right time for a quick dessert.
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Ingredients
Instructions
- Peel fresh tamarillos and chop roughly. If you're using frozen ones, thaw in the refrigerator and scoop out the flesh.
- Combine the fruit and water in a blender, and pulse a few times, until all fruit chunks have been processed. If you wish at this stage, you can strain the liquid to remove the somewhat stubbon seeds--but I like the crunch they bring, so left them in myself.
- Transfer to a saucepan, and simmer on low heat, stirring occassionally, for about 15 minutes, or until the sugar has dissolved completely and the sauce has begun to thicken.
- Add the cinnamon and vanilla, mix well.
- Allow to cool, and transfer to a bottle.
- Serving suggestions: over vanilla ice cream, as pictured, garnished with a few toasted walnuts; as a warm complement to cold cheesecake; or: a few spoons of the sauce in a glass as tall as you'd like it to be, with ice and soda water poured atop.