Persimmon Pleasures

I hated the first persimmon I ever tasted.

It was a dried persimmon, home-dried by a woman my mother knew in Arizona. We had gone to visit her house and she had these brown lumpy things strung up in her window, drying in the sunshine. She gave my brother and me a taste, which we both thought was pretty icky. We swallowed it, but just to be polite.

It wasn’t until I moved to Japan that I fell in love with persimmons. The area I lived in was known for the fruit. Each fall the trees were laden with globes of deep orange. The stores were filled with these persimmons—called kaki, in Japanese—a herald of autumn. I was soon in love with these gorgeous mini pumpkin-like fruit.

Each fall I would look forward to the bounty of persimmons that would naturally follow. I am awfully fond of the Asian pears—called nashi—that would appear around this time as well, but I love persimmons with a fervor reserved only for peaches, blackberries, and Meyer lemons. The mere glance at a bin full of ripe persimmons is enough to send my toes tapping. They are one of my favorite fruits.



I am not the only one who thinks of persimmons as great and grand. The genus name, Diospyros, means “food for the gods.” In Japanese they are kaki, in Spain they are caqui, and in Israel they are called Sharon fruit. The name persimmon comes from the native American Powhatan language of the East Coast and means a dry fruit.

But the persimmons we know today do not come from the Americas. Today’s persimmons are from China, where they have been grown for centuries and more than two thousand cultivars exist. From there the plants were introduced to Korea and Japan. It wasn’t until the mid 1800s that persimmons were brought to Europe and the United States.

Of course, not all persimmons are created equal.



There are two kinds of persimmons—fuyu and hachiya. When people tell me they don’t like persimmons, I always ask them which kind of persimmons they’ve had. I assume that anyone who has been turned against the fruit has had the misfortune to encounter a bad hachiya persimmon. I put the blame squarely on this unfortunate variety.

I am sure that hachiya persimmons have their supporters, but I am not one of them. They are the more attractive fruit, this I will admit. They are slightly elongated—an acorn-shape—and tend towards shiny skin. They turn a lovely deep orange color, but that beauty comes with danger. To my mind, the charms of a hachiya persimmon are only skin deep.



The problem with a hachiya persimmon is two-fold. If you do any reading about persimmons, you will see that hachiya is considered to be the “astringent” variety. This little word in no way prepares you for the experience of accidentally tasting a hachiya persimmon before it is ripe. Imagine a bitter cotton that coats your tongue and you cannot scrape it off. You will spit it out, you will rush for water with which to wash your mouth out, but it won’t make a difference. You must be very careful not to eat hachiya persimmons before they are ripe.

The other problem with hachiya persimmons is perhaps only a problem for me. Hachiya must be allowed to ripen so completely, to overcome their astringency, they go over the line that I prefer not to cross and into gushy territory. For a hachiya persimmon to really get good, it must be allowed to come to near liquid form, contained only by its skin. Imagine a water balloon of a piece of fruit and you won’t be far off. It may be a failure on my part—some character flaw, I am sure—but this is a consistency that I just don’t enjoy.

At the same time, I know of people who love hachiya persimmons. A friend of mine says the best way to eat a hachiya is to make a small hole in the skin with your teeth and suck the innards out. My own squeamishness over mushy and gushy things prevents me from enjoying this experience; I am sure it is my own loss.



I prefer the fuyu persimmons, which are—it must be said—the shorter, stumpier, squatter fruit. No matter, in this case beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder (or in the palate). Fuyus can be eaten hard, like an apple, though they only get sweeter and softer with age. I like mine at about the same place you might eat an avocado, with just the tiniest bit of give to the pressed finger. You can let them get softer, to the point where you can scoop them out with a spoon and let them slide down your throat. It's not a bad way to go.

Some people bake things with persimmons—cookies, bread, puddings even. I seem to remember a persimmon pudding with sour lemon sauce in the first Martha Stewart book, Entertaining. I am sure these are all fine, I’ll even hunt up some links for you to check out, if you’re of a mind to do so, but for me I am a purist. For me there is only one way I like my persimmon and that is mildly ripe, peeled (though it is true you can eat the skin), and cut into quarters. For me, this is true autumn bliss.



It is also true you can freeze persimmons, just whole, in their skins. When they begin to soften you can eat them with a spoon like a sorbet. This is what I had for my birthday last year, when I was trying to eat deal with some food restrictions. The color is pretty astounding.



I suppose I can also say that I like dried persimmons—but again, here I am picky. I don't like the full dried fruits that turn brown, but I did fall for these orange-colored slices last year. They were chewy and sweet and I took them with me on hiking trips. They were my favorite new snack for a while.



But really, give me a plain, unadorned persimmon any day of the week. Just please make sure it’s a fuyu.



When I lived in Japan, one of my favorite signs of fall were the peeled persimmons hung up outside homes to dry in the open air. This is how hoshigaki—dried persimmons—are made (you can see a photo here). I’ve since read that the fruit is massaged every day, to keep it soft, but I never saw such a thing. As time goes by they do turn brown, and the sugars rise to the surface and create a bit of a bloom effect (see here). I like them fine, but they’re not the same as fresh persimmons. I’ll take a fresh one any day of the week.

Perhaps my favorite sight was a small thatched Japanese farmhouse that sat just off the road I took to work each day. There was a persimmon tree in the yard which didn’t ever seem to be harvested. At least it was never harvested early. When the first snow of the season fell it blanketed the tree and the vivid orange globes of the persimmons. Next to the dark thatch of the traditional farmhouse it was a glorious sight. I think of it often this time of year, and kick myself for never having photographed it (this shot gives you an idea). I hope the farmhouse is still there, with its crop of persimmons.

Persimmons, this time of year they have me seeing stars.



If you really must cook with your persimmons, here are some ideas:

Elise's persimmon pudding cake on Simply Recipes
Lara's persimmon madeleines on Cook & Eat
Shuna's persimmon pudding and naked persimmon salad on Bay Area Bites
James Beard's persimmon bread recipe from David Lebovitz
Chocolate persimmon muffins on Riana's Flickr account
Susan give us a savory use for persimmons—as a salsa for pork on Food Blogga