My First Persimmons

I am new to persimmons.

I’d heard of them, Pim once gave me a delicious jam she’d made from them; but purchase them and eat them in the real world? I had not. And then, on a recent trip to the Hollywood farmer’s market, I saw piles of them everywhere.

Those two mounds of persimmons represent the two types of persimmons most readily available in California: Hachiya (the ones on top) and Fuyu (the ones on the bottom).

Fuyu persimmons are ready to eat right away. I put them in that cranberry sauce I posted about earlier this week; as I cut them up into cubes, I snacked on a few and they tasted like a honey-flavored nectarine.

More interesting to me were the Hachiya persimmons; mostly because they came with directions. In order to enjoy one, according to these directions, your best bet was to freeze it and then let it come back to room temperature.

I put one in the freezer one afternoon and the next morning I took it out. By the late afternoon, the persimmon was ready to eat—it went from waxy and hard, to soft and very pliant. I sliced it in half:

The texture was remarkably creamy. Like a cross between the Fuyu persimmon and a banana–I gobbled this up in no time.

And so it was that I ate my first persimmons and so it was that I liked them. And thus a new fruit was added to my fruit vocabulary.