persimmon possibilities

I haven't spent much time with A Love Affair with Southern Cooking: Recipes and Collections (2007) despite having a copy for weeks now. I browsed it as I ate cereal a few mornings ago and my fingers stopped on the page about persimmon pudding. Just so happens that I bought a persimmon a few days prior without any concrete plans for it. Anderson's persimmon pudding looked good, but I needed an entire cup of persimmon pulp.

Ian returned from the grocery store with several more persimmons in tow. His persimmon identification wasn't the greatest, so he asked the woman working in produce to corroborate the fruit's identity. She said what he held in his hand was not a persimmon. Soon they drew another produce worker into the conversation and she confirmed that Ian's selections were persimmons.

What appealed to me about the persimmon pudding was the information Anderson included about the fruit's endangered status. All around the south, farmland and orchards are gobbled up in the name of progress and development of McMansions for those people who simply cannot live in high-density, historic neighborhoods. Anderson only wrote about development and cited it as the reason for the scarcity of persimmons. Ahem, of wild persimmons. There are plenty of domesticated persimmons, but like most things, those in the wild have better flavor and more character than those industrially produced.

Growing up in a border state, as Tennessee is referred to since it's along the northern edge of the Mason-Dixon border, I never ate persimmons. Anderson's section on pulping the persimmon didn't help me since mine was unwild. She suggests rinsing the fruit, removing the stem and leaves, and pushing it through a strainer to free the fruit of it's skin.

Didn't work for me. I sliced the skin away and cut the insides into small pieces. I tasted one. Ew. Not that great. Kind of sweet followed by a painful bitterness on my tongue that caused me to spit persimmon pulp into my trash can.

Pounding my potato masher into the persimmon pieces didn't result in a mashed consistency, so i turned to my Braun handblender and mushed it that way. The other ingredients were butter, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves.

I substituted several different sized ramekins for the 1 quart casserole dish Anderson called for in her instructions and placed them inside a water bath inside a larger casserole dish. It was my first water bath. I've never made cheesecake in that manner. It seemed too complex, so I avoided those kinds of cheesecakes. However, in this instance, it was not so bad, not traumatic a bit.

Ian was surprised that the persimmon pudding had to bake for an hour.  I read. He played a game on his hand-held gaming device. About a minute before the timer went off (it's portable and was next to me, and not in the kitchen), I returned to the kitchen, turned off the oven, and pulled out my casserole dish.

A small amount of batter ran over the edge of the ramekins, so the water bath water was murky and clotted. But that was no trouble. Extracting each ramekin was dicey. I didn't want to wet my oven mitt. Ian wandered into the kitchen. I found a spoon, and we both took bites.

It was like gingerbread lite. Like too subtle for our palates.  Where was the persimmon flavor? We were disappointed. But, other pudding possibilities came to mind immediately. Apples. Ian wanted apple pudding. I leaned toward pear. Who knows what we'll try? But at least we have a new baking technique to list in our skills section.

As for the Anderson book, I can't wait to read it's other sections. In the introduction she wrote that southern cooks emphasize sweets. Likewise, her book is heavy in the sweets/desserts. And that's quite all right with me.

Comments

[dawnhouser]

oh, bekka, i just love this post.

(i had to link your blog to mine so i can remember to check in daily. if you mind, let me know & i can remove it, lovey.)

[lla]

oooh - thanks for the introduction to the book! I do love Southern Cookbooks, but had not yet been introduced to this one...

Persimmons.... We had a persimmon tree at the edge of the backyard. Not sure whether it was ours or the neighbors. Despite the ready access, Ive never eaten one. They would get over-ripe, fall off the tree and split. They were horribly sticky and a magnet for wasps... Your pudding experiment is quite interesting though... Can't wait to see what other variations you attempt!

[persimmonpudding.com]

Sorry you had bad experiences with persimmons. Perhaps I can help a little. Within the asian persimmons, there are non-astringent types (like fuyus) and astringent types (like hachiyas). The astringent types are like our natives (Diospyros virginiana). Non-astringent can be eaten while still firm. They're best used to eat out of hand, in fruit salads, etc as they have firm flesh. Astringent types require bletting in order to ripen. That means you'll need to leave them alone until the turn slightly darker and so soft it feels like the skin will just slip off. At that stage, there is no astringency. It might take some trial and error to get it right. Asian persimmons are ok, but since you're in TN, well within the range of our native persimmons, you should be able to find native persimmons (little late this year). The author was correct, they're much more rich and sweet than asian persimmons.

I hope that helps...don't give up on persimmons.

persimmonpudding.com
dedicated to growing, education, and use of Diospyros virginiana L., the common, or American persimmon