My sister-in-law recently tweeted, "Persimmons may be tied for best fruit with mangoes." That's a bold statement but I might have to agree with her. I call Persimmons, "The 'mango' of the Fall."
I was introduced to persimmons about a year ago and I had to research this fruit since I had never heard of it before. So basically there are two main kinds of this beautiful orange fruit: Fuyu - short and eaten when they're firm, Hachiya - "peach-shaped" and eaten when they're soft. Both are quite similar in taste but have different textures.
My co-worker has two persimmons trees in her backyard so I had the privilege of bringing a bag full of them home. While staring at the abundance of Fuyu persimmons in my fruit basket, I thought, "oooh salsa!" Mango and pineapple salsa taste fantastic so I figured persimmons salsa could work. I threw in a few ingredients and viola...an hors d'oeuvre with a perfect balance of sweet and savory.
Persimmon Salsa
Ingredients
2 Persimmons - chopped as evenly as possible
1 tbsp finely chopped red onions
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
a pinch of sea salt
Steps
- Mix all ingredients in a bowl and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Honey-Lime Yogurt
Ingredients
1/4 cup plain greek yogurt
1/2 tsp lime zest
1 tbsp honey
a pinch of sea salt
Steps
- Mix all ingredients in a bowl and refrigerate until ready to use.
Baked Tortilla Chips
(optional, you could just use regular tortilla chips)
Ingredients
5 whole wheat tortillas
cooking spray
sea salt
small cookie cutter shape of your choice or you can just cut them into triangles using a pizza cutter
Steps
- Pre-heat the oven to 350º F.
- I used a diamond shaped cookie cutter to cut the tortillas and then cut them in halves so they were the perfect bite-size triangles.
- Spray the triangles with cooking spray on each side and sprinkle salt.
- Bake for 5-8 minutes on each side, or until crispy.
Assemble
- Put the baked tortilla chips on a serving platter.
- You can either dollop a small amount of yogurt on each tortilla (this could get messy) or use the sandwich bag technique. Transfer the yogurt mixture in a sandwich bag and cut a small piece at one of the corners of the bag and pipe the yogurt onto each chip. This made the dish mess-free and pretty.
- Top it off with the Persimmon Salsa and serve.
Total time: about 30-40 minutes | Serves 4
Other ideas: Chop up persimmons and add to your yogurt to make a perfect fall yogurt parfait.
