First, we got up to snow. Yes, snow. (Pictures here.) Nothing heavy, but there have been flurries off and on all day, and trust me, it’s too cold for any of it to melt off.
We don’t really know anybody here, certainly not well enough to do Thanksgiving with them, so we headed to a Thanksgiving buffet. It was actually very good, though the turkey was dry.
I was traumatized. No persimmon pudding!
How can you have Thanksgiving without persimmon pudding! Whoever heard of such a thing!
Not that I was surprised. The stores here have those boring, flavorless Japanese persimmons. I asked the produce dept managers at several stores if they ever carried American persimmons, and they’d never heard of American persimmons.
Oh, the horror!
The American persimmon (diospyros virginiana) is perhaps the world’s hardiest fruit tree, with very hard wood, and small deep orange fruits (persimmons), which are astringent until ripe and falling off the tree. Unlike the Japanese persimmon, the American persimmon is essentially jelly — you certainly can’t slice them. You put them in a food mill and pulp them, then use the pulp in the premiere desert, persimmon pudding, or any of thousands of different recipes (persimmon breads, cookies, you name it). The American persimmon is an intensely flavored fruit, unlike the inferior Japanese cousin, and truly is, as the Greeks named it, the food of the gods.
Problem is, nobody outside Indiana seems to know about them.
The only place I found on the web where you can order pulp is Dillman Farms, which ironically is about three miles from where we lived until we moved here.
When you get your persimmon pulp, here’s what you do with it (and you eat it with LOTS of whipped cream):
Persimmon Pudding 2 c. sugar 2 c. persimmon pulp 3 eggs, beaten 2 c. flour 1/2 tsp. cinnamon 1 tsp. baking soda 1 1/4 c. buttermilk 1/4 c. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter 1. Mix sugar and pulp. Add beaten eggs. 2. Mix flour and cinnamon. 3. Add soda to buttermilk, and stir until foaming stops. 4. Add flour mixture and buttermilk to persimmon pulp. 5. Melt butter in pan in which you will pour batter. Pour excess melted butter into batter, then all into prepared pan. Bake 1 hour at 300 to 325 F. This is not cake. It should fall on its own. If it doesn't, drop the pan a couple of times when it comes out of the oven. Cool. Serve with whipped cream. LOTS of whipped cream.
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joubertconlon says:
I’ve just finished reading your food posts and keeping the recipes. :) I’ve been thinking of posting some South African recipes but the only written recipes I still have a restaurant sized and I need to down-size them.
We got persimmons in California but the only way they ripened perfectly was to freeze tham and then thaw them. One of my favorite fruits. I used to make a persimmon chutney for Thanksgiving in the restaurant.
November 24, 2005, 8:29 pmrightwingprof says:
Those were the small American persimmons, yes, not the big Japanese ones? Yes, you have to wait till the first frost, because until then, they’re REAL sour.
November 25, 2005, 4:42 pmjoubertconlon says:
I don’t like the Jap ones. I mean the soft ones. We had to freeze them because we didn’t get frosts to ripen them. I just found some here in the boonies yesterday - at $2 a pop. I said no thanks.
November 26, 2005, 12:52 pmBarbara says:
I was doing a search on persimmons and came across your blog. I grew up in Indiana (near Evansville) and we always had persimmon pudding at Thanksgiving, and any other time I could convince my mom to make it.
Since I live 1000 miles away now, I did a search to find where I could have persimmon pulp shipped to me last fall, and came across Dillman Farms as well. I can personally tell you their stock made terrific persimmon pudding.
I should warn you - it cost me a heckuva lot more to have it shipped (because it needs to be sent next-day air) than the cost of the actual contents. But totally worth it!
March 30, 2006, 9:29 pmrightwingprof says:
Yes, we stocked up on Dillman Farms persimmons when we were last in Bloomington.
March 31, 2006, 9:17 am