Some years back I planted a white grape, the type with seeds but very, very sweet, on our back fence. I trained it moderately well, and it is now massively productive.
Whole grape sultanas on the left, halved and deseeded on the right
I don’t know how/don’t want to know how to make/drink wine, really.
So most of the crop goes to some really high class vinegar – I recommend it.
But this year I put some of the grapes into our dehydrator. I had to keep a pretty close eye on them as they dry up and harden quickly.
Going for the path of least effort, I did one tray of them whole. Seeds and all. And I guess the result matched the amount of effort, really. Edible, but not easy to eat…
The other tray sounds more laborious than it really was. I cut the grapes in half lengthwise, then picked out the seeds. A small cocktail fork made it a quick operation.
And those are by far the ones I like – that’s what I’ll be doing next March. Sitting and cutting and picking seeds out of grapes…
It would be about five years ago I got a persimmon tree from a local garden centre. While it claimed “delicious sweet fruit” it didn’t specify that it was of the Fuyu variety. Here in New Zealand, Fuyu is predominantly grown. That’s the persimmons that are eaten when they are still hard, crisp like an apple.
The other variety, the “older” persimmon variety, is generally called hachiya, and mine is close related to that variety, though somewhat larger and shaped more like a Fuyu.
But believe me, this is one of the astringent varieties. If they are not absolutely ripe, overly mushy in fact, they have enough tannin or whatever to turn your mouth inside out. Seriously unpleasant. Many people just refuse to eat them because of the fear of astringency!
Frozen blocks of persimmon pulp.
But if you’re patient, and wait until they are soft and squashy – they are a delight to eat. Sweetness and flavour – a delightful fruit.
This year, the second year of reasonable production, wasn’t quite as large as last year’s, but I did plan to cope with the birds better. Last year it seemed all the local birds will swoop on the tree and peck out all the fruit – and always before they were really ripe! The astringency did not bother them at all!
So this year I used clothes pegs to clip small pieces of nylon window mesh material around each fruit or cluster of fruit. And it worked fine. Hard to judge the colouring when looking at them through the spring and summer, with most decisions made by squeezing them.
I ate some of them fresh, of course, but I’ve frozen most of what I harvested. Not sure what I’ll make from it. Last year I made some of the best vinegar I’ve ever made from this persimmon pulp/juice, but that seems to be undervaluing it, really.
So just before I went to pick the last two fruit on the tree, I heard about hoshigaki, a method developed to store these astringent persimmons. It is, really, just dried astringent persimmons, but with a certain process.
The stem and woody calyx at the top is left intact, and the persimmon is basically just peeled. They should be still quite firm, more firm than you’d ever risk trying to eat raw… But the ones I had were quite mushy, so peeling was challenging. I did surprisingly well, as it turns out.
The fruit are then suspended on strings – I tied one end of a piece of string to the two I had. Traditionally, they are hung, often even outside under the eaves of the house, to dry through the autumn and winter. Me, I just hung mine up in front of my desk. This photo, however, shows them over near a window so you can see the colour better.
Hoshigaki – persimmons drying.
And they are drying. At first it seemed like they might just start dripping liquid, but they have maintained their shape and texture, with only 1 or 2 drops of sweet, sweet juice. Just now, about 10 days into the drying, they are still quite squashy, but the outside has dried to a sort of leather.
But here’s the fun part! As they dry, each day or two, they are supposed to be massaged gently! Rolled between thumb and fingers. Why? Apparently that helps to break up the ‘lumps’ of the inside, and encourages the sugars to migrate to the surface of the fruit! They should have a sort of ‘dusting’ of sugar in a few more weeks’ time, and then they’ll be ready to eat.
Most of what I have read compares them somewhat to a moist dried fig/apricot sort of thing. I wish I had more than just two to play with just now!
