[NAFEX] Wild persimmon tasting
Donna &/or Kieran
holycow at cookeville.com
Wed Dec 3 23:30:37 EST 2008
Astringent persimmons are eaten after they become squishy, this is true of
the Asian kakis as well. If you don't like squishy foods, you won't want to
eat your persimmons as "dessert" fruits. However, the pulp is pretty good
stuff in cooking. About all I make with it is a modified applesauce cake:
just substitute persimmon pulp and cut the sugar in half. It's as good as
brownies for pure decadence. You can also flatten the fruit and dry it for
something rather like a date. Don't bother to take the seeds out, they will
pop out easily when dried. Just make sure the astringency is gone before
you dry them.
I like persimmons very much, but I must say they seem to be variable in
character. I have an Early Golden with fruit that turned bright orange
months ago but stayed astringent till recently. As it has 90 chromosomes it
had no seeds at all from our 60 chromosome wild stock. I had grafted one
tree from a local clump I consider good quality, but my crop this year
proved that the original tree lacks a pollinator close by. Like yours, it
has only one or two seeds per fruit. At our place it's full of seeds, not
much room for pulp. A lot of the wild persimmons on our place had reached
maturity since 2006 (Big Freeze in '07) and they all have 6 or more seeds
per fruit, plus they all overcropped so all the fruit are small. I think
the latter problem will take care of itself for next year, but I need to
track down one or two male trees next spring and chop them down. Donna
More information about the nafex
mailing list