AN ABUNDANCE OF PERSIMMONS

This photo of persimmons hanging ripe on our tree at Das Helwig Haus B&B was taken in the autumn of 2006 when Maude, a French girl, was here for six weeks as a Wwoofer. She is shown cuddling Patches, the black and white feral female cat who arrived at our home in 2005 and adopted us.

Maude, Patches and persimmons

Since then Patches has featured in many of my photographs. Since then the tree has grown and the Satin Bower Birds have multiplied, so that it is no longer possible to allow the persimmons to remain hanging on the tree until the end of May.

This year I took this photograph of Patches perched in the tree at the beginning of April, when the fruits were barely coloring.

Patches in the Persimmon tree

Persimmons are a highly prized fruit in Asian countries but not commonly used throughout Australia. There are two types of persimmon - the astringent and non-astringent. My tree belongs to the astringent type and is a variety called Nightingale. These fruits may look ripe, as in the photograph with Maude, but if you should eat one at that stage of coloring it would draw your mouth like a green banana.

Before you can eat one of the astringent persimmons it must first ripen to the soft texture of an over ripe tomato and the skin will become translucent.  At that stage the flesh will slip between your fingers or down your throat. There are some people who find this ’slimy’ feeling repulsive. You will either love this type of persimmon wholeheartedly or turn away in disgust.

Ripe and mushy flesh of a Nightingale persimmon

In recent years the Satin Bower Birds, famous for the way the male bird creates a bower of twigs and a dancing platform he decorates with all things blue, where he then dances through and around the bower while singing to attract a female mate, have decided to over-winter in our garden. These birds, native to the rain forests of Australia, still spend the spring and summer months in the rain forests, nesting and rearing their young, but have found it easier to survive the winters by moving to domestic gardens where fruit and berries are plentiful.

The bower of a male Satin Bower Bird

These birds come in flocks to my garden in time to eat any remaining figs, cherry tomatoes or the persimmons. then the strip the berries from my holly bush and the cottoneaster hedges. They enjoy the fresh green shoots of flower and vegetable seedlings, especially green peas or sweet pea leaves. In a dry spring I literally count the days waiting for these birds to leave, knowing that they will continue to trim back my garden as they forage for green food. Only when they leave can I expect my garden to produce flowers. One or two blue/black males will accompany about a dozen khaki colored females.

This year the birds arrived before the persimmon fruits had ripened. Two Wwoofers stripped the fruit from the tree. Persimmons, like many other fruits, will continue to ripen after they are are pulled from the tree.

Persimmons

These fruits needed to be stored about another two weeks to ripen to the soft, translucent stage. What then? The fruit is extremely sweet and quickly sating, so I find I can not eat more than one or two of the fruits. How should one preserve these fruits and for what purpose?

My answer is to puree the ripe flesh. It can then be frozen and used as a substitute in fruit loaves like Banana Cake or Zucchini Bread, thus creating a Persimmon Loaf. These loaves also freeze well and can be taken from the freezer, rapidly thawed in a microwave oven and served as warm, buttered slices for unexpected morning tea guests.

The other way I preserve persimmons is to again puree the fruit and spread it on sheets in my dehydrator to dry. These sheets of fruit leather are then snipped into small pieces with kitchen scissors and stored with my other dried fruits for inclusion in my breakfast muesli.

Barbara preparing persimmon leather

My friend Barbara Buchannan assisted me like a wwoofer for five months in 2007 and whenever she wanted a recipe, she would say, “Google it!” Thus, my advice to you is, if you have an abundance of persimmons be adventurous and try Googling for persimmon recipes.

Das Helwig Haus B&B is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.

This is a region noted for summer stone-fruit, autumn apples,  Christmas in July, wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

Technorati Tags: Abundance, apples, Australia, cherry tomatoes, Christmas in July, Das Helwig Haus B&B, figs, fruit leather, persimmon, persimmons, Wildflowers wilderness and wine, wwoofers, zucchini

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