Persimmons. People go wild about them. I’m a bit ambivalent. I never grew up with them around and so never took space in the nostalgia center of my hippocampus alongside Steven Spielberg, boxed cereals, Chef Boyardee’s beefaroni (still only $1.14 at Walmart), and G.I. Joe cartoons. My first experience with a persimmon was hey! in a famous cookbook called Zuni by Judy Rodgers. Long story short, I went out to San Francisco with a girlfriend back in my mid twenties, we went to Zuni, I loved it, she bought me the cookbook later that year for my birthday. Pretty thoughtful. This was back when I would make the recipes in cookbooks I owned. Somewhere along the way that part of me died. So yeah, there is a dish in there called persimmons and bresaola. Air dried beef and what? Weird. Never heard of them. My overpriced hippie grocery store in Burlington, Vermont happened to have some persimmons one day. I bought a couple out of curiosity, brought them home, cut one open, put it in my mouth, chewed…Oh no, oh no…A tannic iron bomb that dried my mouth out, tasted a bit like eating dusty metal shavings and wet cotton. Huh.

Unbeknownst to my younger self, there are two types of persimmons. There’s the ones you can eat like any normal fruit and the ones you can only eat when they turn mushy and look overripe or rotten. You heard that right. The former is called fuyu, the latter, hichaya. Fuyu look a bit like a tomato, hichaya more like an elongated version. Both become a richer red when approaching ripeness and like I said before, you have to eat the hichaya when they’re so ripe it’s borderline gross. The fuyu can be eaten underripe and are crunchy but also have that characteristic tannic mouth drying ability so are best to eat when they start to turn a deeper orange or red.

Persimmons have been around the block. They’re one of the oldest cultivated fruits. Originating in China over two thousand years ago, they went over to Japan in the seventh century, Korea in the fourteenth century and then brought to ‘Merica in the 1850s. Across the pond, there are over two thousand varieties of persimmons grown.

So how do we incorporate these puppies into cocktails? Well, there’s the traditional route which is to make syrup. Yawn. I mean, it works. I don’t know, Persimmons are tough because their flavor is mild, so they aren’t a fruit that will blow you away like their seasonal counterpart the not so humble passionfruit. To use a bit of nomenclature in the parlance of our times, persimmons are more demure than others and so are a more complimentary sort of fruit in a cocktail rather than one that takes center stage. Make sense?

Anyway, since we like things to take more time over here at The Canyon, we coax more flavor out of the persimmons by lacto fermenting them in honey and salt. Fun times. You can do this too. It’s easy but you will need a scale. Cut your persimmons up and remove the stems and seeds, weigh and add equal parts honey into a jar, then add 2% salt.

Maths.

Even if you have some weird numbers, you don’t have to use a calculator unless you’re a gen Z.

So let’s say you have 831 grams of persimmons and you add the same amount in honey. That makes 1662. All you have to do to get 1% is carry the decimal point over two spaces, like this: 1662 —–>16.62. See what I did there? Now double it and round up or down depending on your mood. So, 33. Yeah, it isn’t rocket science here.

After a day, the salt dissolves. Once this occurs, stick blend the whole shebang. I’m getting deja vu.

See how it starts to get all nice and bubbly? This is one of the true fun things in life, believe it or not. You’re witnessing history. Without fermentation all our lives would be really drab and I’m not just talking about all the wine and beer and booze that takes the pain of life away. The hippie sourdough you buy from the farmer’s market for twelve bucks, yeah, that’s fermented. The list continues–kim chi, yogurt, many cheeses, sauerkraut, kefi, miso, vinegar, and so on and so forth.

Once this mess gets crazy, strain it. You can make fruit leather with the dregs if that’s something you’re into. You can also put it in a jar with vodka or high proof grain spirit for future funny business.

Around the Bend (2.0)

1 oz. Japanese Whisky

.5 oz. Sesame Washed Bourbon

.5 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz. über Sherbet

.5 oz. (large) Fuyu Lacto Persimmon Honey

.5 oz. Oloroso Sherry

Shake, strain over a BFR in a rocks glass, top with a few dashes of ango if you’re so inclined.

Special thanks to the legend, Barbeque Mike, for the persimmon haul. Year after year he comes by and gives us lots of fuyu persimmons from his personal stash grown in his backyard.

Your AI generated image for this post, #414, 12/7/24