Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Persimmons!

Chestnut Ridge Ranch is, as you can likely discern, a small scale commercial chestnut operation. Tom and his wife Pam also grow a huge selection of other vegetables and fruits including: apples, pears, plums, cherries, pluots, nectarines, peaches, table and wine grapes, tomatoes, broccoli, chard, kale, and the list goes on... but one of my new favourites is the persimmon.

There are two kinds and one tree of each, fuyu and hachiya. I am somewhat familiar with persimmons but when they are shipped thousands of miles they lose a lot of their magic.

Hachiya persimmons are pointed on the bottom and reach optimal flavour when they are very soft and a dark orangey-red colour. They are extremely sweet and have a slimy (almost mucousy) texture. If you eat them before they are completely ripe they leave a weird film in your mouth. Sufficed to say, these are not my preferred type of persimmon.


My personal favourite is the fuyu. Squat and almost pumpkin shaped, these little guys are ripe when they turn colour, similar to the hachiya but stay very firm and crispy. I can't wait to make salsa with them!

-Janet (and Jay's lovely photos)

1 comment:

  1. I really like roasted Hachiyas, you can just scoop out the insides with a spoon which makes the goopiness less weird.

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