The Persimmon Fix

There isn’t another way to say it: persimmons are anachronisms in January.
Out of season, colors and tastes all wrong for the early months of the
new year, and entirely without context.

So yes, of course, the post below ought to have come weeks ago. But it couldn’t, given the interruptions. News of loss. A massive hurricane called “Thane” which inspired all sorts of obvious local puns: “thane” means “by oneself” in Tamil. Thane vanda puyal [the storm that came by itself] delivered the new year to us in Pondicherry with a whoosh and a bang that destroyed homes and crops and stripped the unprepared city of just about all its green cover.

Through trauma and recovery, however, the threads of the unfinished still manage to poke through. Haven’t you ever found yourself hanging on to an idea and wanting—no, needing to finish it? A story, needing an ending; an argument, needing a fullstop; an experience, needing a resolution [closure, as the Americans would say]. A wish, however out of context, needing fulfillment.

Persimmons were oddly hard to find in Houston this fall. We expected to be greeted, as in years past, with piles of gorgeously fall-colored fuyu fruits, which the massive Fiesta that is our corner grocer typically stocks and sells for pennies a pound. The firmer fruit would be devoured just as soon as they were peeled and cut into segments, a bit like flattish oranges in shape and color, but quite crisp and pear-like in texture, and so divinely sugary that they seem either candied or an indulgence that can be ours only for so long.

No luck finding them this year, however. Was it the effect of the long 2011 Texas drought that has, they say, brought cougars to swimming pools in search of water? In any event, fuyus were nowhere to be found. Desperate for a persimmon fix, we asked anyway—and were relieved when the man stocking produce didn’t wave us away, but stroked his chin for a moment, and walked abruptly toward a nearby display. We followed, hopeful. But then he pointed to the almost-forgotten little pile of the characteristically bright orange fruit, set up in a corner where the last of the season’s offerings or some specialized ingredient that only a few people ever look for, is reluctantly stocked—often not the freshest, often overpriced, as if to say: “Really want this? Well, here it is, but it’ll cost ya.”

We thanked the grocer and turned attention to the fruit, not our beloved fuyu which could be relished slightly raw, but the hachiya variety that is terribly astringent until it is pudding soft, almost overripe. But they were still persimmons. And still so beautiful. So we filled a bag with the acorn-shaped fruit, wincing at the dollar-a-piece price tag, but content nonetheless that there had been a consolation prize at all.

We waited a day longer, and another, just to make sure these were ripe enough to have lost their astringency—but again, no luck. The boys, who’d consume any bowl of fruit set in front of them in a flash, spat them out just as fast with the complaint that “they’re doing weird things to our mouths.” D dashed off to spend the next ten minutes rinsing his mouth out, to no avail. “Yuck!” G added, “those were really, really bad.”

For a moment there we were, a bit like the tiger in the old Korean tale, afraid of the persimmon. The tiger comes a prowling in search of food, overhears a conversation between a mother and her howling baby.

“Ssshh,” says the mother, busy with the meat, “here comes a snake.”
Baby cries still.
“Aah,” thinks the tiger, “baby’s not afraid of snake and neither am I!”
“Ssshh,” says the mother, busy with the water, “here comes a wolf.”
Baby cries louder.
“Aah,” thinks the tiger, “baby’s not afraid of wolf and neither am I!”
“Ssshh,” says the mother, busy with the stove, “here comes a tiger.”
Still no effect.
“What?” tiger grows worried, “baby’s not afraid of me?”
At last: “Ssshh,” says the mother, pausing from her work, “here’s a dried
persimmon.”
Baby grows quiet, instantly.
Outside, the listening tiger is terrified, wondering:
“What sort of a fearful creature must this dried persimmon be?”

I winced again at the sight of the pricey pile that still adorned our kitchen counter, bright orange on grey granite. What sort of fearful creature, indeed.

Now, I’ve long loved baking with vegetables and fruits—carrots, zucchini, apples, beets, pumpkin are quickbread staples in my kitchen. But I’ve also held that if produce was good enough to be eaten on its own, without (very much) culinary intervention, then why fiddle with it? So it was always the lesser and older, the overripe bananas, the woolly-textured apples, produce that retained its flavor but not so much its texture that seemed to require the support of other ingredients and the resuscitation of the cooking process. An Indian attitude, possibly, learned from mothers and aunts who would expertly “fix” dishes and ingredients that suffered for being less-than or not-quite. So would old rice become lemon rice or tamarind rice; coconut re-roasted was revived, older vegetables added to mixed curries or dals or chutneys were suddenly splendid once more. Anything to keep that which was fading palatable and from being wasted. Seeing as we didn’t dare eat our persimmons as they were, they stood to be wasted. So I got to thinking that if we were to get our persimmon fix, perhaps we’d have to tackle our astringent fears, and figure ways to fix our persimmons.

We did, by way of a pudding that was perfect for the after-holiday in its warmth and its guiltlessness—virtually fat and cholesterol free, even if it did (therefore) need a dose of rum to bring it all together.

I suppose if one insisted on decadence, a drizzle of rum glaze wouldn’t hurt, though the pudding by itself, warm from the oven, astringency balanced with just the right flavor of alcohol, really requires no additional fiddling.

Why fear the hachiya? Purée it into a pudding. With a touch of rum,
just in case.

Grab the Graphic recipe by clicking on the appropriate thumbnail image
below and then saving the image that pops up. Or scroll down for
printable written instructions.

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