Fruit recipes

In serving the uncooked Kaki send it to the table with sharp-pointed spoons with which both to pierce quickly the thin skin and eat the pulp. Or it may be peeled carefully, the pulp removed and mixed lightly with orange juice and sugar or with whipped cream—this, before serving. Tapioca and sago, or gelatine already cooked, may be added with the whipped white of an egg for a dessert, but in such case the puddings should be made rather thick and partially cooled before pouring over the persimmon, in order that the latter may not become too juicy with the warmth and make the dessert watery. Frozen persimmons are very delicious—peeled and frozen whole with sugar and orange juice, or mashed with syrup and lemon juice as an ice, or added at the last moment to plain ice-cream. PERSIMMON (Cooked Pudding) This pudding may be made by using to a quart of persimmon pulp two eggs, a pint of milk, a cupful of sugar, a heaping tablespoon of cornstarch, wet in part of the milk, and a heaping teaspoon of baking-powder. Where orange juice is desired as flavouring substitute a small spoonful of soda for the baking-powder. Bake in pudding-dish slowly for an hour and serve, while still warm, with cold milk or cream, though persimmons are too rich almost of themselves to be served with cream. MARMALADE AND JELLY The marmalade (from the dark, non-astringent fruit) should be cooked in double-boiler with no water. Add instead, a little orange juice (about half a pint to two quarts of pulp), and when cooked down thick stir in three-fourths the quantity of sugar (heated) that there is pulp, and cook till stiff as one’s taste indicates. Jelly may also be made with orange juice and orange-pulp added, or the pulp of pie-melon, half melon and half persimmon; but, while the jelly is pretty and delicate it has not much individuality and can scarcely be said to pay for the trouble. The persimmon makes excellent vinegar, beer, and wine and may be preserved, dried, somewhat after the manner of figs. TO CURE OR DRY PERSIMMONS One of the U. S. Government Reports (Fla. Bul. No. 71) gives the following quotation from Professor Kizo Tamari (of the Agricultural College, Imperial University, Tokio) as to the Japanese methods of curing the persimmon: “I will tell you how to cure the austere varieties so as to make them edible or change them into sweet ones in the following ways: “First Method—When fairly ripened pick the fruit from the trees, peel off the skin and hang them by threads attached to the stems in a room for two or three weeks. They will then turn brown or black and become soft. You will say that they are the most delicious fruits in the world and dried still further, they will become just like dried figs, or better than figs. Further, pack them in a box in alternate layers with cut rice straw and keep them for a month. Black ones then become covered with a white powder (not mouldy). They then become very sweet, though the sweetness may not be retained through the next summer. ‘Second Method—Harvesting time being the same as above, the fruits are packed into an empty wine cask (in . Japan Sake casks, Japanese rice-wine). This should still be full of alcoholic flavour, or if the flavour be weak, the cask should be sprinkled with wine or brandy or any other spirit. Sherry wine somewhat resembles our Sake. Sprinkle the fruits very lightly with wine and keep covered air-tight for a week or two according to the temperature and the degree of austereness of the fruit. At the end of the time they become sweet.