Saturday, December 27, 2008

Persimmon Gelato

Up until a month ago I had never even tasted a persimmon, and now if I never saw another I might just be o.k. with that. You see, my older brother and his wife have a persimmon tree in the back yard of their new house. At harvest time everyone hauled away as many persimmons as they could. The Wife and I easily had 60 or 70. The great persimmon experiment of '08 had begun.

The flavor, for those of you who have not had one, is not unlike a dried apricot...rolled in dirt. I'd call it earthy and sweet. We had them every way you could imagine. We had persimmon salad, chutney, syrup, syrup again, and gelato. We had them sliced, peeled, plain, sweet, and savory. At the end of it all, I can honestly say that I'm not sure if I even like them that much, or possibly I'm just sick of them. Here is my recipe for persimmon gelato:
6 fresh persimmons (peeled, pureed, and strained)
3/4 cup half & half
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tbsp. vanilla bean paste
scant pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Pour mixture into your ice cream mixer. We have the kind with the freezer bowl, and it is brilliant. It is so easy. Let that sucker run for about 20 minutes and you will be up to your ears in persimmon gelato. It makes a nice presentation to serve it inside of a hollowed out fruit.


1 comment:

Bianca said...

Wow, way to sell someone on persimmons...ha! I've never actually had one, but after reading this, I'm not really interested in ever trying them. :-)

Hope ya'll had a nice Christmas. And I love the gingerbread versions of ya'll.