Go on safari around the supermarket and see what’s new for the fruit bowl. we’ve embraced the furry kiwi, gawped at a mango and tackled a pomegranate. Now persimmon or sharon fruit may be the new exotic fruit beast in the basket.
You can spot it on the shelves as a yellow-orange, slightly apple-sized fruit with a very smooth skin.
The main growers are now China, Japan and Korea but they are grown too in southern California, assuming the groves have not been burnt down, around the Mediterranean and even in Britain.
The Israelis are also champions of the fruit and they gave the persimmon that alternative of Sharon fruit. we Brits have called it the date plum because it looked nothing like a plum or date but perhaps mimicked its flavour to some extent.
It is high in beta-carotene and contains a range of minerals such as magnesium, calcium, iron and even sodium. It also has twice the dietary fibre of apples per unit weight with a lot pf polyphenols and other antioxidants to mop up free radicals. No fat !
To be honest, the nutritional content is moderate. What it does have in its favour is a reasonable amount of everything that’s useful to the body. It is estimated the fruit contains 2 or 3 per cent of our RDA (Recommended Daily Amount).
Persimmons Make Good Eating
Taste wise, it’s great, superbly delicious but please eat when ripe enough.
There are two types: the astringent hachiya and the smooth, non-mouth puckering form, fuyu.
The fuyu types are eaten when firm and crisp and only just ripe (see how I contradicted myself there). The hachiya though are sweet and spicy, and very rich but terribly tart from all that acid if unripe. Ripening these types takes many weeks in some quarters. Apparently, to speed up the ripening place the persimmon in a paper bag with an apple or a banana peel as the ethylene released from these decaying fruit peels acts as a ripening agent. You know it is ripe when the skin is about to fall off !
Fuyus can be sliced they are that firm. We eat them like an apple as the skin is also edible and contains some of the best nutrients. The hachiyu needs to be squeezed, a bit like an avocado in many respects. Some commentators just scoop out the flesh with a spoon, we just guzzle. The juice is a novel addition to smoothies and tropical fruit bases. that also make great chutney and preserves.
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