Andrew Unsworth shares tips for growing and cooking with tasty tamarillos, a seldom-found-in-store tree tomato that hails from South America New Zealand have now won the Rugby World Cup three times, so they can't get away with claiming two fruits as well. In the 1960s they started calling Chinese gooseberries kiwifruit, and tree tomatoes from the Andes tamarillos. It was all about marketing them.As the latter are called tomate de árbol in South America, they are tree tomatoes.Tree tomatoes are probably easier to grow than find, although some nurseries do stock plants, and there are now many specialist seed suppliers on the internet. You can also grow them from cuttings if you know someone with a tree, but they will make bushier shrubs. I grew mine from seeds scraped from fruit in a hotel fruit basket, and they were as easy as growing tomatoes.mini_story_image_hleft1I have occasionally seen the fruit in shops, but there seem to be no major commercial producers in this country, so if you like them, or are just interested, grow your own. The skin is bitter but the fruit has an astringent and sweet flavour, hard to place between tomato, guava, melon or even apricot. Why try, it's just different.The plant has big tropical leaves and will grow fast and fruit quickly but will bear best from its fourth year. One growing on its own will self-pollinate, two or more will help the flowers set more fruit. They like a subtropical climate but tolerate some cold, although not severe frost. They suffer in both drought and waterlogged conditions. If you can grow citrus, you can grow tree tomatoes.They make a small tree, best pruned back, which results in larger fruit. Older wood bears smaller fruit. Also, the vertical branches can become too heavy and snap, so they sometimes need untidy stakes and props. Otherwise they are fairly attractive in the garden, with big leaves and bunches of the perfectly egg-shaped fruit. The fruit does not all ripen at the same time, which means you can pick them as you need them, but you will soon be giving lots away as a tree can give you up to 20kg of fruit a year.Tamarillos can be blanched and tossed in a leafy green salad with fennel and vinaigrette, used instead of tomatoes to make a tangy chutney, or cooked in a rich curry sauce with meat, fish or poultry...