Word of the day: persimmon
It looks like a cross between an apple and an orange and it tastes like a cross between a melon and a mango. It is a fruit which is very plentiful and popular in China but hardly known in the UK.
Today Vee and I visited our Chinese ‘family’ in Abingdon and we finished out lunch with persimmon – more details here.
December 5th, 2011 at 10:46 am
I’ve eaten these often, and known them as “Sharon fruit” presumably because they’re grown in that area of Israel too. I agree with your description of the flavour, but the appearance strikes me as tomato like.
December 5th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
You’re right about the origin of the sharon fruit, Janet, but unless they are much smaller than the persimmons we have seen they are too large to be mistaken for a type of tomato.
December 8th, 2011 at 6:00 am
I can understand why Janet compares it to a tomato, the outer skin is smooth and shiny, the size & shape can be similar, and given the large number of tomato varieties, even the color (oops, for you colour) can be the same.
The persimmon grows all over Israel, not just in the Sharon region in the center of the country. The Hebrew name for the fruit is “affarsemon”(ah-far-seh-moen)