What's My Fruit? - Episode 8

[davidn]

It's been a while since I did one of these! Perhaps the novelty of picking up a mad-looking fruit when we go to the import supermarket wore off for a while - the fruits go in and out a bit with the seasons, but there's still a whole array of potential there. This one came from an eye-catching bright orange pile near the checkouts, where most of the madness seems to be concentrated. It has the same rough shape and leafery as a strawberry without any seeds on the outside, but is about the size of an apple.

This is a Hachiya Persimmon, a fruit that was surely imported from Oompa Loompa Land by the Vermicious Knids. In truth I'm always slightly worried that I will eventually bring home a fruit that is incredibly common and yet unknown to me alone - but I had never heard of the persimmon family before. Looking on Wikipedia reveals that there are several species and varieties, and also that it's one of those annoying things that everyone knows is a fruit but is actually botanically classified as a variety of fish or something.



You can just cut it open and reveal a smooth flesh inside with no apparent seeds - all of it can be eaten except the waxy skin. But that generosity comes at a price - this fruit is the exact opposite of juicy, and as soon as you put it in your mouth it forcibly sucks all the moisture out of every corner of it like those hoover things that you get at the dentist. Consequently it's very difficult to actually identify any sort of taste at all before you are entirely absorbed inside-out into it, but after a long dry chewy struggle (and a lot of water) I came up with mango as the closest possible comparison - I couldn't eat very much of it because it's like eating a whole packet of crackers. Apparently you're meant to leave them until they're on the point of over-ripe, at which point the inside becomes more jelly-like and its saliva-absorbing properties get much less severe.

Further reading on Wikipedia tells me that the dry sensation is caused by a property called astringency, caused by chemicals which bind to saliva and shrink bodily tissues. Perhaps by tomorrow I'll just have folded in on myself in a black hole.

Comments

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

oh, it's a fruit!

[davidn]

I actually suddenly thought it might be the one from the FL Studio logo, but they say that's a stylized pepper.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I swear, every time you do one of these, all I can think is, "how was this not a 50's BBC game show?"

...Actually, now that I think about it, I've never verified that it wasn't. Hang on a tick. *googles it*

Ahh. Red Dwarf reference. Strange...how'd I miss that? o_O

[davidn]

It's a small, off-duty Czechoslovakian traffic warden! It's a red and blue striped golfing umbrella! It's the Bolivian navy on manoeuvres in the south Pacific! All of which would be slightly more appetizing than this.

[kytheraen.livejournal.com]

I keep seeing these in Tesco for 50p and wondering what they taste like...

[davidn]

They're good! Just... don't try them too early. They'll let you know if you have.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

So the other time it was the Monster Fruit that's deadly if you eat it before the right point in its decomposition cycle, and this time your choice of fruit merely dessicates you. One of these days you're going to end up combining the "What's My Fruit?" series with the "Cooking Disasters" series, and accidentally buy something that turns out to be some sort of biological hand-grenade when it comes into contact with stomach acid.

Christmas Crossover Special! :D

D.F.

[davidn]

Yes, it does seem a rather unwise choice for someone like me to do this, doesn't it? Somehow I've ended up with a diminished sense of self-preservation, trying to keep up with all the other weird stuff that just happens to me.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Kaki fruit/Sharon fruit is what it gets sold over here as in Lidl's but is slightly more squat. I can vouch for the fact that if it is much better just before it goes off. You know how when you get a really ripe cherry tomato that explodes as it enters your mouth? Just like that and it doesn't zombify you.

I actually saw a fruit the other day that I thought may have been a variety of the Dosakai from your first episode. It was called a Pepino. It looks the same but different and a quick search I noticed it is related but different.

[davidn]

Yes, someone on Facebook from Germany mentioned that they were called Kaki there (you remind me that I rather miss Lidl as well). It's still in the fridge - I'll try it again soon!

And what a thought, that a fruit may have been noticeable to someone else because of my exploits :) Those do look like the dosakai... both of them seem like the missing link between cucumbers and melons.

[jenny0.livejournal.com]

These are pretty common in the southern US. As per my 93 year old grandma-in-law, you're supposed to pick them from the tree in the yard, set them on the windowsill until they're mushy, THEN eat them. If you try to eat them before they are 100% ripe, you get the tart-sour dry-mouth-of-death thing. I think you are right in comparing them to mango, although yeah, more like jellied mango puree that you need to spoon up. More trouble than they're worth in my opinion.

[davidn]

A lot of these fruits over the course of my exploits have been rather a lot of trouble - cactus pears that insert their needles in you and give you a squirt of juice and fourteen thousand seeds per cubic inch, Monstera Deliciosa that has to peel of its own accord and even then causes a sore throat after eating it... it's easy to see why we eat the normal fruits that we do, choosing them based on being the least actively aggressive ones.