Fruit Friday: Tomate de Árbol

We’ve decided to start a weekly feature of fruits. Living in a tropical region means having access to a wide variety of fruits. Wide is probably an understatement; according to a study carried out by the UN there are over 5,000 species and 200,000 varieties of fruit of which 365 species and 7,000 varieties are native to Colombia. Most of the time fruits are made into fresh juices. None of that V8 bullshit.

This week’s fruit is Tomate de Árbol (Tree Tomato) also known as Tamarillo.

I have only tasted this fruit in juice form, although wikipedia wants to convince me that the inside flesh can be eaten as a breakfast dish. The taste of this fruit is sweet, a kind of blend between passion fruit and mango. Of course, we made juice!

You have to boil the Tree Tomatoes first for a couple of minutes, it keeps the juice from turning black and also makes the peel easier to remove. You then puree the the fleshy inside with some water and sugar and pass it through a strainer to get rid of the seeds. Then you refrigerate it to drink it nice and cold. As you can see the juice is pretty viscous as all fresh juice should be. This juice also has all kinds of nutritional value and helps with digestion. I remember my grandma used to make me drink it before meals.

Hope you enjoyed the first installment of Fruit Friday. Stay tuned for next week.