Hally Bini, market manager for the Maplewood Farmers’ Market, remembered a grove of persimmon trees in Umbria, Italy. “They had dropped all their leaves, and these brilliant orange fruits hung on bare branches – beautiful.” This fall, she’ll find Missouri persimmons close at hand when grower and forager Ivan Stoilov brings them to his stand at her market. Stoilov doesn’t know how many he will find, and Bini won’t be the only one waiting for them.
“Missourians love persimmons. They are a true sign of fall,” said Krista Durlas, local product forager for Whole Foods Market in Brentwood. She is 95 percent sure Whole Foods will carry persimmons from Goods From the Woods organic farm near Licking, Mo. “They have plenty, over 200 trees,” she said, “but we are in the process of setting them up as a vendor with our corporate office.”
While Durlas is waiting for the ink to dry on the contracts, she’s thinking about how to entice people unfamiliar with persimmons to try them. “They’re mushy, spotty, funky-looking fruits,” she said. She’s right. But looks are deceiving: The taste of a ripe persimmon is sweet, sparkly and refreshing. The color can range from deep gold to an orange as bright as pumpkins. In addition to Missouri-grown and -foraged persimmons, several stores will carry the fuyu persimmon, usually grown in California.
The fuyu is shaped like a small, flattened tomato, with a pretty green calyx firmly attached. The Melissa’s brand of cinnamon persimmons at Dierbergs were pricey, just under $2 a pop. I chose the softer fruits, some with brown spots. Fuyus at Jay International Foods on South Grand were bargain-priced at only $1.29 a pound, but when I bought them, they were really unripe. Sappington International Farmers’ Market will carry persimmons, too.
Locally grown persimmons were unavailable when I did my recipe testing; it’s that seasonal thing – nature doesn’t understand deadlines. But I can tell you what worked with the wonderful cinnamon fuyu persimmons. Eating one out of hand, quartered, cored, unpeeled, made a great snack.
A number of recipes recommended peeling, coring, quartering and freezing eight to 10 persimmons, then simply pulsing the frozen pulp in a food processor to make a zingy sorbet. This works amazingly well. I tried a recipe that called for one scoop of premium vanilla ice cream, then a second of persimmon sorbet, topped with puréed raspberries. Neither the sorbet nor the raspberry purée used any sugar, so the dessert showcased the tastes of persimmons and raspberries and the sweetness the ice cream.
Martha Stewart touted persimmons for salads. She suggested peppery escarole as a base of greens, but the taste was too strong for me. I liked a combination of Boston red lettuce and baby spinach leaves, sliced persimmons and red pears, toasted pecans and golden sultanas with a ginger dressing. In a second salad, I tried the same greens with diced persimmons, pomegranate seeds, Jazz apples and toasted pecans with a sesame dressing. Both salads were extraordinarily glam, and so tasty.
I plan to make my bread pudding recipe with Jay’s persimmons when they ripen and when the weather cools. I’ll use brioche as a base, then add persimmons, cinnamon, ginger, sultanas, dried cranberries and pecans. And, of course, I’ll have hard sauce.
One word of caution: Missouri persimmons must be totally ripe or they will be quite bitter. When ripe, they are very soft and the pulp is gelatinous. California fuyus are sweet even when they are slightly underripe. The season is short, mid-October through December, so gather persimmons while ye may and freeze the ones ye can’t eat now for later.
This article appears in Nov 1-30, 2007.