Persimmons and Pears with Cinnamon and Star Anise: The Season's Last Adventure in Canning

I love the Atwater library. Anywhere I can walk in and take books out for free is a miraculous thing to me. Atwater just happens to be the version of that system closest to my house. There's actually a membership (which I think defeats the purpose of "free lending"...I actually laughed at my roommate last year when he BOUGHT a membership) but it's so little and so convenient that it's worth it.

There's a cookbook section. Of course, I do read other things...but put me in front of two bookshelves on foodstuffs and I'm a happy camper. I took out three canning books (mostly out of practicality, since I couldn't carry more than that at the time) awhile ago and proceeded to pickle up a storm. The last thing I made before returning the books was a recipe for canned pears. I had a few persimmons kicking around and so I threw those in too, hoping that was kosher. Someone will tell me now if it's not, I hope. I left one jar un-canned and enjoyed the fruit in the fresh syrup.

So I can't give you the exact recipe I used, but find yourself a library or a reputable online canning source, and go to it. It was really simple, and pear and star anise is a basic combo. You take some sugar and water in a pot. Dissolve the sugar, and bring the liquid to a boil. Add the cinnamon sticks (I added extra ground cinnamon as well) and star anise and reduce the heat to let the syrup thicken and the spices infuse.

Peel and core the fruit and remove any soft spots or overripe sections. Slice them into sizes that will fit into jars. If they can't get in easily, they can't get out easily, and you don't want to be sitting around a few weeks later bemoaning the fact that the slice of pear you're craving is playing hard to get.

Sterilize the jars, put the fruit in the jars, almost to the top, pour on the hot syrup. Place the warmed lids on the hot jars, put sterilized rings on top of the lids, and process them again. I forget how long I had to process them, but it was pretty painless. Much easier than jam since the liquid doesn't have to get to the jam stage. So it was more like a pickle, but with sugar. See, I know nothing about canning. It was so nothing like a pickle.

The cans looked beautiful, and I decided to can the cinnamon sticks with the fruit, so the syrup will keep infusing over time. Now I know some people don't like cinnamon as much as I do and it may get overpowering, but anyone to whom I offer this fruit is going to have to like cinnamon. Otherwise, what the heck are they doing in my kitchen? Go find another kitchen to pillage.

You know what? The fruit gets better and better as it softens in the syrup, but since it's a simple syrup, what made this INCREDIBLE was eating it with my ginger confit. Absolutely amazing. The ginger cut through the sweetness, and then the earthy power of the cinnamon...and then the bitterness of the star anise...nothing like it. If you don't want to can you can just cook the fruit pieces a little in the syrup while it's simmering. That works too, but you can't enjoy it a month later when persimmons are no longer in season...So if you can can...

Fruit Vendor Throwdown: Dancing, My First Persimmon and Knowing That Something's Missing

Have you ever had an experience where it ends and all you think is "Huh...That's it?"

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt with persimmons, except, well, it wasn't really a disappointed "that's it". Some people can take things so seriously. Sometimes all you're saying is simply, "that's it?" and it doesn't mean that what you just experienced was bad, just that there could be more (quantity) or it just could have been better (quality). With persimmons, even though it was my first time, I knew this was not the ultimate persimmon flavour. Call it fruit intuition. It wasn't fresh off the tree. It wasn't local. It'd been picked in advance to ripen during transport. Its skin was tough to make it through the long drive. It was just sweet and mild, but I wanted intoxication. I wanted to feel as though the world had slid itself out from under my foot and I'd gone tumbling into a gravity-less void. I wanted sharp acidity mixed with honey-like (not sugar-like) sweetness.

The one thing that was perfect was the texture. There were two kinds of persimmons at my fruit shop and there were three ways I was instructed to eat them:

I follow directions well. Where fruit vendors lead, I will follow. Like a dance. So Leopoldo (whose name is not Leopoldo) told me to eat the smaller ones like an apple, I could eat them right away, and they'd be just a little crunchy. Then let a few more of them ripen a few days on the counter and they'd be soft and mushier, more like a mini-explosion of juice. The larger ones, he said, needed 2-3 days on my counter before they were ready. They should become soft and seem like a single puncture wound would be the end of them. Then I could bite into them and all the juices would seep out. Well I waited 2 days and I tried one. It was still a bit tough, but the very bottom was heaven. The top created a strange starchy coating around my gums and seemed under-ripe, so I figured the trick would be to wait another day or so. The next day the next persimmon was better and the fruit was half mushy and half thicker, soft pieces. These sections of fruit stayed together inside the mush and made for exquisite chewing. One persimmon was perfect with cereal because the juice gave the liquid the cereal needed, and the fruit sections gave the soft chew, so it was like two fruit in one (kind of like milk and strawberries - not taste-wise, just combination-wise).

I bought another 8 persimmons from my second fruit guy to compare. The grapes had been better, so maybe the persimmons would be too. Nope, they were exactly the same.

But then I ran out of soft ones and it got so cold that nothing was ripening in my kitchen, so I'm sitting around waiting for them to ripen and they never will. I've just been told that I should stir-fry them up with green beans, spinach or some other vegetable and since they're kind of tough like I apples I think this might work. My two fruit vendors are locked in a tie, for now.

Next trial: fennel.