Some birthday gifts grow on trees

Although birthday gifts come in all shapes and sizes, they don’t usually grow on trees — but sometimes they do.

My daughter Amber’s birthday presents were literally handpicked at an orchard in rural Hernando County where we recently went to get tree-ripened persimmons and chestnuts.

Picking persimmons

Amber’s birthday is in the first week of October, a fruitful period that coincides in Central Florida with harvest time for papayas, avocados, starfruit, bananas and chestnuts as well both hard and soft varieties of persimmons.

Although persimmons are unfamiliar to most Americans, our family has enjoyed the taste of these Asian delicacies for years. We discovered them shortly after we moved to Florida in 1987 and every year since then, we usually include a persimmon-picking expedition as part of Amber’s birthday celebration.

Last year, we went on a birthday persimmon picking excursion with Amber in Gainesville

“They’re like Florida’s version of northern apples,” the birthday girl said after biting into a fuyu persimmon she’d just plucked from the tree. “I really like them when they’re crisp and crunchy.”

Sampling the goods during persimmon picking in Brooksville 

Persimmons come in two basic varieties, astringent and non-astringent fruit. Fuyu, the kind my daughter likes best, are in the non-astringent “crunchy” category, edible when their flesh is either hard or soft. Fuyu persimmons are in direct contrast to hachiya and other astringent varieties, which are edible only when their flesh is soft and squishy.

Astringent persimmons are the ones that give the fruit a bad reputation. One bite of an unripe fruit, and the mouth goes suddenly dry and feels like it is full of fluff. It’s an extremely unpleasant sensation and enough to make many people avoid persimmons from then on. That’s too bad because if they’d only waited until it was completely ripe before tasting, they would have had a completely different experience. When ripe, an astringent persimmon is extremely sweet with none of the negative characteristics of an unripe specimen.

Although both astringent and non-astringent persimmons turn orange when ripe, their different shapes make it easy to tell the two types apart. Non-astringent persimmons look like tomatoes. They are round with flat bottoms while astringent ones have an acorn shape with a broader top and pointed bottom.

The grove we visited on the outskirts of Brooksville had several species of both types of persimmon trees as well as numerous chestnut trees. After picking as many persimmons as we wanted, we turned our attention to the chestnut trees. While our family is well acquainted with persimmons and enjoys eating chestnuts, we had never harvested chestnuts before.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to harvest them this time either. The farm’s owners, Fred and Dorothy Galbraith, had already picked the chestnuts and extracted the nuts from their extremely prickly burs.

Persimmon and chestnut farmers, Dorothy and Fred Galbraith

“Better not touch them unless you have leather gloves on,” said Fred Galbraith when he saw me reach out toward the spiny bur. Heeding his words, I pulled my hand back but not before it brushed against the pointy spines. Goodness, how sharp!

“How do you pick them without hurting yourself?” I asked Fred as I inspected my hand. 

His wife said, “You shake the tree and the ripe chestnuts fall to the ground. Fred wears thick leather gloves to pick them up and to open them to get the nuts.”

Before you can roast a chestnut, it must be extracted from a very prickly covering

 We left the farm with a little over five pounds of chestnuts, many more pounds of persimmons and a quart jar of raw clover honey. Although we shared part of the bounty with our other children, Amber took home the most. Birthday gifts may not usually grow on trees but when they do, they can be especially tasty presents.

Want to pick your own?

Fred and Dorothy's u-pick farm is located on Hickory Hill Road in Brooksville.  To see if any chestnuts or persimmons are still available call 352-799-4068. 

A fruitful harvest

For breakfast, I filled a bowl with small slices of starfruit and bite-size chunks of pineapple topped off with a few spoonfuls of pear sauce and a dollop of maple syrup. The maple syrup came from the local grocery but everything else was homegrown.

The starfruit, also known as carambola, grew on a small tree next to our house while the pineapple bore fruit in the shade of a dwarf bamboo in and among a sprawl of wandering Jews and rain lilies.

I had picked the pears — hard Florida pears with a vastly different texture and appearance than the more familiar store-bought Bosc or Bartlett pears — from an abandoned orchard on a neighbor's property.

A few evenings earlier, I sat in front of the TV surrounded by two large stainless steel bowls, a cutting board, one paring and one chopping knife plus a moist towel to wipe stickiness from my hands. Peeling Florida pears is a messy, time-consuming job, but I didn't mind. Producing pear sauce has become an annual autumn activity. One taste of the smooth sauce that follows a long slow boil of the peeled and mashed fruit replaces any negative thoughts with the sweet flavor of homemade food.

I have last year's mild winter to thank for my morning meal. While Florida pears can tolerate winter frost and temperatures in the teens, pineapples and starfruit are not nearly as forgiving. Until last year, the previous four or five winters in our part of Central Florida were brutal. Chilly temperatures caused tropical plants of all types, including fruit trees, to suffer greatly. Unless covered, heated or otherwise protected, many either died or died back.

That changed last winter when mild weather persisted from late autumn through early spring. Our 10-year-old starfruit tree, which died back during previous cold spells, finally made it through the winter of 2013 unscathed. New limbs appeared and in early spring, small white flowers dotted many of the slender branches, the first hint of the fruitful season ahead.

A few of my pineapple plants also survived. For several years, I have been saving the tops of every store-bought pineapple I'd eaten — about two a month — and planting the spiky green crowns wherever I could find space in the garden. Pineapples are a type of terrestrial bromeliad with a shallow root system, minimal water requirements and a preference for acidic soil in a sunny or semi-sunny location.

Although they are low-maintenance "air" plants, their long growth period requires quite a bit of patience. It takes approximately two years for each crown to produce a single fruit. During that extended growth period, these heat-loving plants must stay out of the cold. Most of my young pineapples died during winter 2012. The ones that escaped harm were either sheltered from chilling by neighboring plants or had been planted during a period when their growth wasn't halted by frigid temperatures.

After so many years of disappointment, it's been exciting to once again harvest fruit from some of our more cold-sensitive plants. While the starfruit tree is just beginning to produce fruit, I don't have more pineapples to pick. But that's OK. Yesterday my husband Ralph and I cut down a small hand of bananas and the persimmons on our trees are almost ripe. There is fruit in our future — homegrown and fresh picked. Breakfast couldn't look better.

Persimmons almost ready to pick

Persimmons, an autumn treat

Ripe persimmons ready to dry

Simply Living
October 29, 2012

Our food dehydrator has been running non-stop lately.  Autumn is persimmon-picking season and we have been busy peeling, slicing and drying trays full of the popular Asian fruit.

Native to China but extensively cultivated in Japan, persimmons are an essential part of Japanese diet with over 1,000 different varieties cultivated for use in everything from wines and vinegars to baked goods and candy.  Although they were introduced to North America in the late 1800s by Admiral Perry and have been cultivated in Florida for over 100 years, persimmons failed to win over the palates of American consumers.

Perhaps their lack of popularity is due to the fruit’s astringency factor.  Most persimmon varieties are high in a soluble group of phenol compounds found in plants called tannins.  Other fruits that contain tannins include cranberries, pomegranates and strawberries.  When unripe, these fruits taste bitter and cause the mouth to pucker up and feel dry.  That changes as the fruit ripens and the tannin compounds decrease

The small plum-sized Florida native persimmons that grow wild in Central and Northern Florida are especially astringent.  Rather than being the type of fruit picked to eat fresh, wild persimmons are best cooked, fermented or made into jelly or jam.  However, certain varieties of Asian persimmons (Diospyros kaki) are good to eat right off the tree.  In addition to being the same color as tomatoes, these non-astringent tree fruits also share a tomato’s round, slightly squat shape.

Picking Hachiya (astringent) persimmons off the tree

 

Fuyu is one of most commonly grown varieties of non-astringent Asian persimmons.  When they are hard, I like to eat them like an apple, skin and all.  When soft and a little riper, I prefer to peel the skin (which toughens as it ripens) and eat the sweet flesh with a fork.

Instead of being round, astringent Asian persimmons are heart-shaped.  Hachiya is the most frequently planted variety of this high-tannin-count fruit.  In order to avoid the unpleasant dry mouth sensation, heart-shaped persimmons must be fully ripe and soft to the touch before eating.  When ripe, the flesh is very sweet with a pudding-like consistency.  I like to scoop out the flesh with a spoon to eat fresh or use in baking.

This year, we discovered that instead of waiting for Hachiya persimmons to ripen, we can peel, slice and dry the unripe fruit when it is still hard and otherwise inedible.  It turns out that heat from the dehydrator removes the astringency by accelerating the tannin removal process.  As the tannin cells decrease, the fruit’s natural sugars move to the surface resulting in a somewhat sticky, exceedingly sweet and quite tasty candy-like product.

When dehydrated, the trays full of persimmons will taste as sweet as candy

This new discovery adds to the many ways our family enjoys eating this underappreciated, nutritious fruit.  We eat a great many persimmons fresh either whole, cut up in slices or in fruit salad.  Occasionally, I bake with it, making persimmon bread or muffins but the main thing we do with persimmons is dehydrate them.  We then pack the dried fruit into small tightly sealed bags and place them in the freezer to enjoy as a sweet treat all year long.

If you have never eaten a fresh persimmon, now is a good time to try.  While Florida’s persimmon season has ended, California-grown persimmons will soon appear in produce departments for the November and December holidays.  And if you are one of the people who once sampled a persimmon but had an unpleasant experience, consider trying them again. 

Remember, if it is a round, slightly squat cultivated (non-wild) persimmon, it doesn’t matter if it is hard or soft.  At any stage of ripeness, most round persimmons are good to eat.  However, if it is a heart-shaped fruit, make sure to wait until the bright orange-red skin feels soft when squeezed before scooping out the flesh and taking a bite.  

Little-known persimmons are worth discovering

Two plump tanenashi persimmons, similar in shape and taste to commercially grown hachiya persimmons, ripen on the tree as temperatures cool.

Simply Living
September 17, 2011

Ralph just came in from picking persimmons. One of our trees is loaded with fruit, and my husband aims to pluck the ripe fruit before the bugs, raccoons, possum and fox discover them.

For a long time, eating ripe persimmons has been one of our autumn rituals, but it wasn't always that way. Like most Americans, I knew nothing about persimmons. I didn't grow up having a bowl of them on my breakfast table like bananas. When I felt like a snack, I didn't bite into them like apples, nor did I bake with them or make them into puddings. Persimmons did not have a place in my life until the 1990s, shortly after we moved to Lake County.

In those days, the bright-colored orange fruit native to China held great promise as a replacement crop for frost-killed citrus groves. Throughout Florida's central and northern regions, farmers planted extensive orchards of the small, deciduous trees in the hope that the fruit, which is a dietary mainstay of many Asian countries, would catch on with U.S. consumers.

We planted our first trees around that time, and while interest in persimmons shifted slightly, it never caught on to the extent growers hoped it would. These days, persimmons are more familiar to American shoppers than they were 20 years ago, but to many, they remain a mystery. That's too bad because these shiny-skinned edibles are well worth sampling for their sweet flavor and high nutritional value.

Low in calories and with zero fat, persimmons are a great source of dietary fiber as well as being high sources of vitamins A and C. Unfortunately, discovering the fruit's many attributes involves actually tasting one, and to do that, consumers have to learn when a persimmon fruit is ripe enough to eat.

There are hundreds of different types of persimmons but only two varieties — hachiya and fuyu — are commercially available. Of the two, hachiya is most common in grocery stores. That's regrettable because unlike fuyu, which is edible when its flesh is either soft or hard, hachiya is palatable only when its flesh has attained a jellylike consistency. One bite into an unripe hachiya stops most people in their tracks, preventing them from ever trying a persimmon again.

Both fuyu and hachiya persimmons are orange fruits that ripen from September through December. The skin on tomato-shaped fuyus is thick, similar in texture to that of an apple. I like to eat them like apples, one bite at a time, until I get to the throwaway stem. My husband approaches the fruit differently. He cuts off the tough outer skin and slices the flesh into wedges. I like his method, and if I weren't so lazy, I'd prepare them that way too.

Hachiya persimmons are also orange-colored but their skin is thinner than the fuyu and their shape is acorn-like instead of round. They are also an astringent fruit, while fuyu persimmons have no astringency at all.

When ripe, hachiya flesh has the consistency of a ripe plum. If you bite into the fruit before then, the inside of your mouth will feel like it is full of fuzz, the way it does when you take a bite of an unripe banana.

Because I'm an impatient eater, I often approach a hachiya like a plum. I pick it up and bite into it, skin and all. It's a sloppy affair, with slippery flesh and dripping juices threatening to drop onto clothes. Ralph's technique is much neater and more civilized. He cuts off the stem end and uses a spoon to scoop out the sweet-flavored, soft insides.

The tree that Ralph just finished picking is a tanenashi persimmon, similar to the commercially grown hachiya. Assuming he can stay ahead of the creepy crawlers and wildlife nibblers, that one tree should provide us with enough fruit to eat fresh, freeze and share with family.

But you don't need your own tree to discover the wonders of this little-appreciated-in-America fruit. Next time you're at your grocery, buy one and take it home. If it is a fuyu persimmon, go ahead and give it a try, but if it is a hachiya variety, exercise patience. Wait until the flesh is plum-soft before taking a bite. Once you've tried it, don't be surprised if eating persimmons becomes one of your autumn rituals as well.