I have a secret love affair with persimmons. As autumn evenings slowly chill down and turn into cold wintry nights, I start scouring the stores for persimmons. Their sweet, nutty, gooey fruit is like nothing I've ever had before. I first tried them in Japan (where they are known as kaki), and have been hooked ever since. They are soft and slimy when fully ripe, like a mango almost, and remind me a bit of the flavor of walnuts, only sweeter and, of course, juicier. They are super-healthy, and they are sadly only available for a handful of short weeks in early winter. I wait all year for persimmon season to arrive (it's almost more exciting than Christmas, seriously).
It was certainly easier to find persimmons in Chicago, where we had dozens of stores within a reasonable driving distance to choose from. But not so here, in rural Michigan, where I can't even get a zucchini at the grocery store in town if it's not summer. And even when I finally did find them (at Walmart of all places), I still got funny looks and a "What on earth is this?" from the cashiers when I went through the checkout line.
Until recently, I thought there was only one kind of persimmon, and this is a mistake that you DO NOT want to make yourself. Because one kind of persimmon is a heavenly treat, and the other can make you think you have been poisoned and are going to die a slow and painful death. And of course, I had to learn the hard way...
See, I went back to my local source (Walmart, unfortunately) last week, all excited to pick up some more persimmons before the season ends. This time, though, there were two different kinds, fuyu, which I usually eat, and hachiya, which was more acorn-shaped than the regular fuyu, and on this particular day, looked much plumper and fresher than my regular kind, though I had never even heard of the hachiya until then.
I was actually excited to get the hachiya (foolish me) persimmons, because they looked so plump, and promptly set them out on the counter to ripen (or blet, as it's apparently called). I checked them every day, and when I woke up this morning I discovered that one had finally gone slightly soft, like how I like them. I cut it up into pieces, with the skin still on, to eat them like orange slices. I picked the biggest, juiciest slice I could find and well, basically, just shoved the whole thing in my mouth. There was a split second during which my brain was trying to tell me something was wrong, but I had waited so long for this moment that I actually convinced myself that it was fine, it was great, in fact, because this, after all, was a persimmon, and I love persimmons.
That lasted about 3 seconds. I gasped in horror, the persimmon rind fell to the floor, and I ran to the sink to spit out the flesh that seemed to be cementing itself to the roof of my mouth. Was that my throat closing up? I tried to spit out the fruit, but it was like it had suddenly turned to stone and was just sticking to my mouth, my gums, my throat. It was the most god-awful sour, bitter taste I had ever had in my mouth. What kind of horrible, horrible trick were they playing at Walmart, putting this item in the food section and calling it a persimmon? I tried to scream for Alex and tell him to get the car ready to go to the emergency room because I most certainly must be having an allergic reaction and was probably going to die. I prepared myself to start feeling dizzy, nauseated, and perhaps, just perhaps.....I was ready for the worst.
After a minute or so (a very long, unpleasant minute), I started to feel the return of saliva. I was able to spit, and I drank as much water as I could stand. And when I realized that, yes, I was going to live, I plopped in front of my computer and started looking up hachiya persimmons. It turns out that you cannot eat hachiyas unless they are extremely over-ripe. Before that they have unpleasantly (to say the least) high levels of tannins, hence the bitter, bitter, awfulness. And apparently once they are so ripe that they squish like a water balloon when you squeeze them, then they will be sweet and sticky and delicious (I have yet to experience this, but I will consider trying them one more time, if I can still get them at Walmart). But I will need to recover a bit from this traumatizing experience, which hopefully has not ruined persimmons for me (like how some very, very mean older brothers sometimes ruin Santa Clause). In the meantime, I urge you to try a persimmon (a fuyu persimmon, that is), unless you are very brave, brave enough to take on the hachiya....
(Note: To learn more about persimmons, check out Wikipedia's fact-filled page.)
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