This is an amusing storyfrom Roots , Game and Trail :
Upon tasting my first persimmon tree , I had a vision for preserving this sweet , creamy fruit . I imagined a thick , apricot colored jam , fill with exotic spices and smeared on fond sourdough wampum . It took two year to attempt this imagination , a vision that was met with a realness verification . rather of a sweet , creamy jam , what I got was a grainy , tannic , mouthpiece - drying- pulp . I was baffle at how a yield that was so sweet-flavored and delicious when clean could transmute into a gritty flock . Persimmons remain the most challenging groundless food I ’ve preserve and what come after are the successes and loser experienced in taming this wild food for thought .
Back in December , as Rob publish in “ A December Hunt for Wild Edibles in the Pineywoods of Texas , ” we befall upon our largest collection of persimmon to date , 25 pounds ! The sweet gooey yield was pay heed from the tree diagram , encapsulated in a papery thin tegument that burst when the yield hit the ground . We lightly excite the trees and the persimmon rained down around us . Some exploded on wallop , while others revolve to a closure or receive their fate in the Neches River . We painstakingly collected the gooey fruit in the plastic handbag we had handy , and carried out our H.M.S. Bounty .
Once nursing home , the real work began . The persimmons had to be cleaned of all the sticks , dirt , and leathery fruit stem swim in the bags . This labor was made all the more intriguing by the state of the yield . A majority of the persimmons had ruptured on the journeying out , and our fictile traveling bag were fill with a conglobation of odorous pulp magazine , stems , skin , and seeds .
I missed out on the first two rounds of persimmon cleaning but Madi , Ross and Rob seemed to have had a really keen time with it ! Their grinning and joy seemed endless as they separated the mush and debris by hand . Here was check the importance of having the right tools ! A sieve , mesh udder , and galvanizing imbiber were all employed , with limited success , to severalize the pulp from the seeds and skin . After all of this , I part down and purchase a food mill ; a tool which streamlined the detachment process to give us the thick , sweet , pulp we desire . We are eternally grateful to its inventor .
With the auburn mush successfully attained and the hardest part seemingly over , I reasoned to put the pulp magazine in a peck with water , sugar and spices and simmer until the alchemy was unadulterated . Wow , was I ever faulty ! While this method can be employed for nearly every fruit and berry that I can reckon of , the persimmon defies the norm . piddle is no booster of the persimmon . The two descend together like vinegar and Milk River , seriously . Water causes the persimmon puree to curdle , then become gritty and astringent . It is the astringence that made the taste test especially unpleasant . A pocket-size taste immediately draw and quarter all of the moisture from your mouthpiece and left you with a dry film on your teeth and lingua …
The story just come bad , reminding me of our most recent failure .
We were give a 5 - gal bucket of Citrus limon , and Rachel decided it would be howling to turn them intoLimoncello .
We buy pure grain alcohol ( everclear ) , and she come out zesting the maize . But when she tasted the piquance , it was frightening ! Horribly sulfurous !
We looked online to see if there were other reputation of virulent piquance , and sites agreed that it was due to grating the white interior pith into the nip , alternatively of just the bare outer layer of skin .
But that was n’t it . No matter how thin we spice , the gamboge tanginess was still horribly bitter .
As a test , we inebriate some in everclear , then I reduce it with a niggling H2O a twenty-four hours later and tasted the liquor . It was still horrendously sulfurous .
The next mean solar day I went and bought Eureka lemon , brought it home , and slice up a splinter of zest from it with a tongue . It was tangy , lemony and … zesty . Not cruddy and caustic .
Our lemon just did n’t have unspoilt piquantness , even though they tasted fine at bottom and made good juice .
Sometimes these things occur . We ’ve had produce rot before we get it processed , we ’ve had ferments turn awful , we ’ve made lousy cheese , we ’ve spoiled soups and sauce and full meals . try on , try again .
I once strain to make fish soup .
It was disgusting .
And a duad of week ago , Rachel made a pumpkin curry .
It was also disgusting .
Yet you ’ll have successes too , and the more matter you attempt , the more you fall upon what do work . That ’s how Rachel wroteher cookbook!Test , mental test , mental test . And occasionally throw a stack of something to the pigs . Or the wimp . Or the dog .
Or , if all else fails , the compost hatful .
