The tamarillo season is in full swing in my neck of the woods so it’s time to bust out this little recipe that I came up with one year when a friend of mine gave me a shitload* of these sour little bastards from his heavily laden tree.

It’s a great little chutney for stuff that you would use chutney for (terrines, ham & cheese sandwiches, lathering on your girlfriend, etc) but also great served with grilled chicken, pork or fish when you want something a little different.

To prep the tamarillos, I find it is easiest to cut a small cross into the top end (as you would do to peel a tomato, not for religious reasons), submerse them in boiling water for a few minutes and then plunge them into iced water. You can then take hold of the base and push the tamarillo out of its skin. Don’t worry if they get a bit mushed up, as you are going to cook them down for a few hours anyway.

TAMARILLO CHUTNEY

1.5 kg tamarillo, prepped as explained above
1.5 kg granny smith apples, peel, core, rough chop
500g brown sugar (you can easily add another 100 g if you think you’d like it a little sweeter)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 long red chilli, chopped
2 tablespoons ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cardamon

Whack all ingredients into your heavy based pot and cook out on a low heat for 1 hour or until it is nice and thick like a chutney. Stir it often so it doesn’t stick to bottom of the pot and burn, turning your beautiful tamarillo chutney to the dark side – a place it does not want to be.
Once cooked, spoon chutney into jars and store in refrigerator until you’re ready to use.
This will definitely get better after a week or two when the flavours have time to have a little party and get to know each other, maybe hook up and have a short-term relationship (or maybe “develop” would probably be the correct term).

*shitload. An actual unit of measurement, as I think we have previously discussed.