Persimmons

So by now you may be wondering what’s up with the persimmon thing?  Several years ago when we bought our house, we were happy to see two mature pecan trees on the property.  We also saw a mature persimmon tree.  We had never touched, much less eaten, a persimmon and had no idea what to do with one, never mind an entire tree full of them.  We talked with the neighbors about it, read online, and drove around town looking for another one; turns out we have one of two in our small town.  It also seems that nobody knows how to cook with them.  Fortunately, our next door neighbor, who built his house at the same time ours was built, right after WWII, told us how good they were frozen and eaten like sorbet.  He was kind enough to tell us that our tree was a Hachiya and that we should never eat the persimmons before they resembled round orange sacks of jelly.  Really?  Turns out that was the absolute truth!  We spent the first few years harvesting ripe persimmons and freezing them, thawing on occasion for a sweet treat.  One year I made persimmon-pecan bread—-yummo!  I even tried persimmon-pumpkin pie—-not so good.  We made sure our elderly neighbor got his choice of the persimmons each and every year until he moved.
So this year I was reading online again and came across people discussing drying sliced persimmons and discussing making Hoshi Gaki, a Japanese dried-persimmon.  I was hooked!  We tried drying some sliced and not-quite-ripe specimans several days ago in the food dehydrator.  It is like eating candy!  I love it!  We also have hung several persimmons and are drying them in the Hoshi Gaki method.  I’ll get a picture up in a few days.  The tree is almost ready for a fruit harvest and usually the persimmons are all ripe within a few days, so we will dry what we can in the dehydrator, freeze a few, and hang the rest up to make Hoshi Gaki.