Today's challenge - persimmons
- May 14
- 6 min read
"I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love."
One of my Saturday dinner guests brought me this gift - a big bag of persimmons. She did this last year as well and I think I made chutney then. She also gave me a pot of her home-made persimmon jam.
Now I have plenty of chutney and plenty of jam in my pantry - indeed I have so much jam it is also stored in the laundry. So I think it would be foolish to make more jam and chutney. So what to do with this bounty of a fruit I have never actually tasted and which is somehow gorgeous in its bright colouring and its cute shape, whilst at the same time being somehow wrong? Is that the right word? They look too much like tomatoes to be taken seriously as fruit. Yes - just not right. Looking at them you don't expect them to be sweet.
As I wrote that I realised that I wasn't tempted to taste one for no good reason and so I took courage in hand, selected the smallest one, cut out the core, cut it into quarters and peeled one quarter before taking a bite - which is when I remembered one description of the taste which I think went along the lines of apricot shading to melon - which is actually surprisingly accurate. I tried another quarter with the skin on, also fine and then consumed the rest. I can still taste the sweetness, and can tell that honey would indeed be good - and perhaps a touch of lemon juice. Somehow unexpectedly - really nice. I could just eat them! Well there are probably too many of them to do that.
Mine are firm to the touch, but apparently even when squashy, and looking like this inside - which is when you eat them with a spoon - like a kiwi fruit - they still taste delicious - in fact this may well be when you are supposed to eat them just as fruit. And so my friend told me that one thing you can do with a glut is to cut them up and just freeze them. And I did indeed mean to buy some of those ziplock plastic bags for this purpose, this morning, but, of course, forgot. The picture is from a short Instagram video from Costas World - Costa of Gardening Australia that is.
And in fact during my cruise around the internet I found that somebody - maybe Martha Stewart - recommended just freezing them as is and then eating them when thawed a little with a spoon. A sort of natural sorbet I suppose.
You can also cook them to a pulp - perhaps with some citrus juice and maybe honey - and then freeze it. Or use them in smoothies and milk shakes ...
I have also discovered that they are native to China, northern India, Japan although there is another variety native to America. Rather beautifully the fruit ripen after the leaves have fallen, so that - again - they look weirdly and perhaps magically - decorative. Somebody likened them to Christmas decorations.
Also David Lebovitz tells us that:
"The wood of the persimmon tree is not just beautiful but it’s prized by makers of many of the finest golf clubs in the world and is considered superior to most others woods or man-made materials."
Which sort of adds to its weirdness/magic.
There are two main types - the fuju - which is the one that I have and that we see most often in the shops, but there is another which is not as round and has a pointed base called Hachiya which is more astringent and which must be eaten when fully ripe. The fuju will apparently sit in my bowl for up to a couple of weeks ripening to the squishy version shown in Costa's video.
My first attempt at looking for recipes was to turn to Jane Grigson's Fruit Book and Nigel Slater's Tender v.2 - which is all about fruit. To no avail. Nigel doesn't mention them at all, and Jane Grigson has no recipes and merely tells us that we should:
"Try it alternating with avocado, and French dressing, served with smoked chicken - and the deeper-tasting soft persimmon for dessert, served with cream and nothing else."
So I turned to the internet - which is a little bit sad really. All the following recipes but one are for sweet things, but there may be other savoury recipes somewhere - I swear one of my Saturday rejected recipes contained persimmon but I do not know which one now.
The savoury one was from Ottolenghi -
Braised lamb neck with persimmon and feta salsa but I'm being a bit unfair here because actually there were lots of recipes for various salads - often containing bitter leaves, and many recommendations to serve raw slices with cheese and with ham, in the same sort of ways that you would use melon.
Persimmons Australia has a full range of options, mostly sweet, but here are a few of the sweet baked variety from here, there and everywhere: Persimmon cakes (Shi zi bing) - Leanne Kitchen/SBS; Honey and lime baked persimmons - Australian Women's Weekly; Persimmon tarte Tatin - Australian Women's Weekly - which they served with a raspberry sorbet; Persimmon maple upside-down cake - Australian Women's Weekly; Persimmon tart - Martha Stewart; Persimmon crumble with honey and cinnamon - Just a Mum's Kitchen - there were lots of other versions of this; and Persimmon and coconut muffins - Annika Manning/SBS
I should maybe have included this Persimmon bread adapated from a recipe from the late James Beard by David Lebovitz, although it's not quite the same thing. I'm pretty sure I found other examples of this as well.
Really I guess all of the above show that you can treat persimmon like any other kind of fruit.
And so you can make frozen - or semi-frozen desserts such as this Persimmon pannacotta - from Channel 9's KItchen. I saw the odd recipe for ice-cream and sorbets as well.
And maybe I shall choose one of the above desserts to use some of my bounty - but none of them use more than a few - 4 at the most. So what am I going to do with the rest if it's not jam or chutney?
Truth to tell I am tempted by two other preserving methods - which are very similar to each other but differ in the patience required to make them. Not the difficulty - the patience.
The first of these is a fruit leather, one of which I made a long time ago - just to try, from the River Cottage preserving handbook. The recipe was by Pam Corbin and was for an Apple and blackberry fruit leather roll as demonstrated in the video link. As she says in the book of fruit leathers:
"I discovered how easy it is to create these strong, semi-transparent sheets, and how versatile they are. They are fun to use and eat - you can cut them, roll them, fold them and pack them away. Light and easy to carry, they're full of fruity energy, so great for lunch boxes or long walks."
She is so right. It was so easy, so satisfying and so good to eat - my grandchildren loved it. Basically you soften your fruit with some lemon juice, purée it with honey, spread on a parchment lined baking tray and cook long and slow in the oven. Overnight is best. Our Melbourne Ceres Fair Food even has a recipe for Persimmon and pomegranate leather and I saw another one somewhere with strawberries - but it could jut be plain.
But then there is paste - Persimmon paste - Taste which is somehow a bit more gourmet and a bit more flexible. However, that purée that you have created for your fruit leather has to be stirred over a low heat for a long time until it's really thick, (without burning it) before you leave it to dry out before cutting into pieces you can keep or give to your friends.
Hmm. I'm not a very patient person, but I do like the idea of a paste, so maybe when they've softened a bit I'll give it a go. It's a different, and dare I say, more impressive, gift for friends isn't it?
I could make some leather too of course.
They are expensive to buy - $2.30 each to buy!! I have many dollars worth in my kitchen! Thank you Christine. I'll try and make some paste when I'm feeling strong. And they did taste really nice.
YEARS GONE BY
May 14
2025 - Nothing
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2019 - Goodbye Glyn
2018 - Nothing
2017 - A word from Madhur Jaffrey
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