persimmons become hoshigaki

When I lived in Mountain View, which has a great Sunday farmers market -- widely touted as one of the best in the whole bay, and I agree, I discovered Hamada Farms, which sells fruit and dried fruit.  When I first lived in MV, I had a great time savoring all the local produce I was not used to seeing much of back in the upper Midwest.  You don't see persimmon and fig trees in Minnesota.  I am sure you can buy them there, and now, food fussiness is on the rise so I am sure persimmons and figs are more common in MN than when I lived there until 1998.  But there is stuff sold here that was definitely not sold back there when I was there.

And that brings us to the gooey persimmons, which I did not know about until I moved to CA. And then, trying Hamada's wide range of great dried fruits -- I used to fly back to Seattle a lot and always brought CA food hostess gifts so I was looking for new, interesting things.

Hoshigaki is dried, massaged gooey persimmons, derived from Japanese culinary culture, although the Koreans dry the gooey persimmons in a similar way. The Japanese hang endless walls of persimmons in the sun, after they get all gooey wet ripe and then someone comes along daily and massages each persimmon. So, yes, it is a spendy food.

But it is awesomely delicious. It is nature's candy, the best natural candy I have ever eaten. The dried, massaged, gooey kind of persimmon (I should look up the proper word:  two kinds of perimmons, one a little like an apple and one gets gooey and you wait until it seems to be rotting and that's when you eat it or make persimmon pudding or something).  I bet persimmon would make an interesting pie and interesting fruit bread. Maybe I'll try some. But as long as there is hoshigaki, nature's perfect candy, why would I?

You get five or six persimmons for five bucks, unless you buy four, then the guy gives you the fifth box for free. When he said that, I bought out his entire stock for the day:  fifteen boxes of hoshigaki for sixty bucks (instead of the full retail of $75) -- such a deal. My mom used to say that my dad would buy six left boots if the price was right, meaning dad could never resist a bargain. It might have seemed like I behaved daffily, but I really love hoshigaki, Hamada Farms always runs out long before I am sated. And I have friends I love who love them. I have already wrapped half of my new stock to mail to these friends:  free hoshigaki if you convince me you love me.

I have to count the carbs, of course, but I can eat these in moderation and they are really, really yummy.

I saw them online for sale for $43/pound plus shipping. I think I got at least 2.5 pounds for my sixty bucks but I don't care: these are awesome perfect food.