I’ve been experimenting with removing the astringency from some hybrids. I put 4 Gora Goverla and 1 Nikitas Gift, all fully colored but still hard, into a zip lock with a dish of gin 5 days ago (first pictures above a few posts). At 3 days I tried one Gora and it still had a fair bit of astringency, but not enough to keep me from eating it. At 4 days, I tried a second Gora and it still had some astringency, but not much. Today, the 5th day, I tried another one and it was fully non-astringent. I ate the last Gora in the bag and it was great as well. Then I tried Nikita and it was fully non-astringent as well, while still hard.
I was mostly interested in the Gora hybrids to use in this way as a replacement for kaki non-astringent varieties, since that meant they would still be astringent in the tree and mostly left alone by the squirrels. It worked just fine. Gora Goverla was very similar in taste to a kaki non-astringent when processed this way. The taste is as good, maybe a bit better, but the flesh is a little less dense and possibly drier. My Gora Roman Kosh died from Kaki sudden death syndrome before I got fruit, but I’ll need to try that one again since it is supposed to be tastier. Nikita was excellent.
This also makes me think of doing this to spread out the enjoyment of harvests when I finally wind up with a lot of fruit. I can have some early with the astringency removed, then enjoy the soft ripe ones and then finally enjoy ones I’ve dried. Months and months of persimmon goodness.
Gora on the right and Nikita on the left.
