Tamarillo's - a tangy mouth teaser...

I've been madly in love with tamarillo's since I first tasted them, about 14 years ago, in a fruit box at Ubon.  That was it - from that moment on I was hooked...  Ubon served them raw, with the skin cut virtually to the end, so that you slipped them off and into your mouth.  Delicious!  

As you might suspect, they're a member of the tomato family, complete with seeds hidden in their silky depths.  The skin is typically considered inedible because it's so bitter, and they have an incredibly sweet, but predominantly sour taste - probably quite unpalatable for most people, but there's something else in there that's a little more undefined...  It's the marmite of fruit...

Burrata, Tamarillo and Fennel Pollen...

I have a whole post on the delights of tamarillo's, so I shan't bore you again, except to say that they must be in your top 100 foods to try before you die... Trust me - they're stunning...  This particular dish makes the most of the tamarillo's ridiculously high umami levels, and pairs it with silky smooth, creamy burrata.

Pain Perdu, Pineapple and Coconut

We haven't been to Marcus Wareing's eponymous restaurant since it was re-branded.  It's a little art-deco jewel-box of a restaurant, but the atmosphere seemed just as hushed at lunchtime as before... Still.  The food was good, and I was particularly enamoured with this dish - a little chef's joke...  The pineapple tastes of coconut, which initially confuses the senses, especially as you try to work out how... I pressed the waitress, it's clearly compressed, because of the texture, but what with? And then of course it struck me - Malibu - the scent led me by my nose to my teenage years.  Malibu.  When was the last time you tasted Malibu?  Well, rest assured, in this dish it's absolutely delicious, as long as you like coconut and pineapple.

Coconut Milk Creme Patisserie [Thermomix]

I use the standard Creme Patisserie recipe on the blog a lot, but in a recent recipe (which contained a coconut curd), I thought I might make a coconut milk variation - after all the fat content of coconut milk is quite high, and the consistency can be similar to milk.  I altered the recipe slightly, but that was because I included 30ml of Malibu, and an increased quantity of flour - I wanted to be able to pipe the creme pat into quite stiff peaks on the plate, for a specific dessert.

Coconut Cream Ice-Cream, with Lime Zest [Thermomix]

There are lots of recipes for coconut milk ice-cream, especially with the rise of the "raw" diner (where a dish is not cooked in any way), and the number of vegans (who can't eat any dairy).  My own persuasion of 'pescetarianism' is supposed to mean that I don't eat dairy (because of my osteo-arthritis), but the reality is that I will have the odd cappuccino, the odd ice-cream, and the occasional bit of chocolate.  Luckily I've was put-off cream for life whilst working for six months in a bakery on Saturdays - there's nothing like free cream slices for your break to put-you-off forever!

The Meringue Girls Meringue Kisses...

I love the Meringue Girls on many, many levels - they're cute, and they're cute! They've taken something basic and created a niche market - good for them... In addition, their cookbook has brilliant little video clips which can be accessed via the cookbook by scanning a special code on your iPhone. They're fun, informative, simple, and definitely give you a sense of their personalities: that's often difficult to achieve in a cookbook.