What God Orders For Breakfast
(Food)
More people in the American South grow Hachiya persimmons than any other Japanese variety, but you’ll never find one in a grocery store. These apple-sized gems are so soft when perfectly tree-ripened that they’re only slightly firmer than a water balloon, and they can’t stand being shipped any farther than the number of footsteps from your backyard tree to your kitchen.
Hachiyas are astringent, which means they’ll make your mouth pucker like St. Valentine’s day at Heartbreaker’s if you try to bite into one before it’s ripe – from late October to late November around here. Which is probably why a lot of people advise that you should just let these babies ripen until they’re nothing but mush inside.
But we beg to differ. You want to pick them when soft, but not squishy. At that point, you can slice them like a tomato, and they’ll reveal a star-shaped pattern consisting of delicious little pockets of a jelly-like substance surrounded by a tasty orange custard. The jelly is actually little sections containing tiny seeds. At this stage, the fruit has a sweeter, more intense flavor than it does if you let it go to mush. So don’t.
Here’s something incredible to do with them:
The Persimmon Breakfast Smoothie
- 2 tree-ripened Hachiya persimmons, tops and skin blemishes removed
– a half-cup of plain or vanilla yogurt
– a half-cup of orange juice
– 1 or 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
– 1 or 2 tablespoons honey
– 1 raw egg
Put all of the above ingredients into a food processor or blender and hit the “liquify” button. The results are foamy, light and delicious – and also almost unbelievably nutritious.
Two ripe Hachiyas have more than 25 milligrams of Vitamin C – about 42% of your average daily requirements. They have about 1,640 micrograms of Vitamin A. Dude! that’s almost twice your average daily requirement. They also contain about 16% of the daily recommended allotment of Vitamin B6, 12% of your Vitamin E daily needs, 10% of Vitamin K, 16% of your daily recommended dose of potassium, 18% of copper and a whopping 60% of your required manganese intake.
Add in the egg, yogurt, orange juice and honey and you pretty much don’t really need to eat for the rest of the day.
→ B.Dunn, Nov 20, 2008, 09 04 am
