Tamarrilo Curd and White Chocolate Mousse Verrine

Tamarrilos are such beautiful fruit rich in colour and texture with a tart pulp and pip centre. Although they are thought of as a Kiwi icon, like feijoa and of course kiwi fruit, it is not very often that you come across them in cooking or baking these days apart from the odd jar of chutney.

The tamarrilo is not native to NN but was introduce in the early 1800’s. It known as a tree tomato in it’s native Central America and is a relative of the potato, tomato, eggplant and capsicum pepper.  Listed among the lost foods of the Incas and known as the ‘tomate de arbol’, tree tomatoes have all but disappeared from their native habitat so we are lucky to have adopted and grown them in our own environment . 

I have been reading many food guides on France lately, I even purchased a ‘patisserie guide to Paris’, since we will be there in several weeks so i wanted to get organised before P books all our time up visiting museums! A girls has to got to get my priorities right and keep her energy up for these kind of trips! What kept cropping up was ‘verrine’ and how fashionable they are in Paris so I decided to make my own version to get me into the swing.

We had friends coming over for dinner on Saturday evening and I happen to know that one of them is very fond of white chocolate so and I thought a combination of white chocolate mousse and tamarrilos would go really well.  Personally I prefer mousse made from egg whites than cream but white chocolate always seems to take longer to mix with egg whites and therefore looses more volume. For this recipe I decided to use both eggs whites and cream which produced  light mousse a lot less rich than the full cream method.

Ingredients for Tamarrilo Curd

• 6 tamarrilos (approx 1 cup of pulp) 
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 100 butter, melted
• 4 egg yolks (keep the whites for the mousse)

Method for Tamarrilo Curd

1. Spoon out the centre of the tamarillos.
2. Blend all ingredients together until smooth.
3. Pour ingredients into a pan and cook on a very low heat, stirring constantly, until curd thickens.
4.  Transfer into a bowl or jar, cover and allow to cool in fridge. I would recommend making this the day or a few days before since it will keep for a week at least the the fridge. 

Ingredients for White Chocolate Mousse

• 200g white chocolate
•  4 eggs whites
• 20g castor sugar
• 100ml whipping crea

Method for White Chocolate Mousse

1. Whisk egg whites until fluffy.
2. Add one spoon of sugar at a time to egg whites and whisk each time to form a stiff meringue consistency.
3. Beat meringue mix until it is thick and elastic. 
4. Melt the chocolate gradually in the microwave or over a double boiler (chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water).
5. Whisk cream to form soft peaks.
6. Fold gently half of the meringue mixture into the chocolate with a metal spoon or spatular.  
7. Fold the whipping cream into the meringue & chocolate mix and then fold in the remaining meringue into the chocolate mix. Try not to loose all the air, you want it to still have a lot of volume and retain its fluffy consistency

Assembly of Dessert

1. Fill a piping bag with tamarrilo curd and another piping bag with the white mousse, it is easy to fill the glasses this way.
2. Pipe alternate layers of curd and mousse into glass and allow to set in the fridge for several hours.