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If you have a fruit tree, you know the struggle: One year, you lose everything to the neighborhood wildlife, and the next, every surface of your kitchen is laden with produce. If you have more than one fruit tree, they’ll usually take turns giving too much or too little, but sometimes you’ll get hit with a double (or triple) whammy and hopefully this is when your creativity kicks in.
Anyway, cut to the 30 pounds of Asian pears sitting on my garage floor, then to the fig tree giving my driveway and windshield its best Jackson Pollock, and then to the squirrels cackling and doing that villain thing with their tiny hands as they decide it’s time to start sampling the full-size but still-green persimmons that deigned, stupidly, to ripen.
For people with my special blend of stubbornness and spare time (with a character-building dose of poverty trauma), canning isn’t so much a hobby as it is a fugue-state compulsion. Because I come from peasant stock, the act of growing and preserving food and then seeing it lined up on my pantry shelves is like a soft tingle in the deepest, most reptilian parts of my brain.
As fast as I can, the deluge of figs is becoming many jars of sticky jam with caramelized onions, aged balsamic vinegar, rosemary and red chile flake. The pears are a ticking time bomb. And now I have to either enshroud the entire persimmon tree in a critter-proof net which seems a rather outsized (and frankly, bird-phobic) response, or start picking them while I can, even if they’re green. Unlike Hachiyas, which are so astringent they have to blet to become edible, Fuyus can be eaten crisp.
This recipe was inspired by chicken-mu (the crunchy pickled radish cubes that come with Korean fried chicken) but I think using crisp Asian pears and unripe Fuyu persimmons actually makes it more versatile. You can cook with this pickle — use it in sauerbraten (it’s as suited to Rosh Hashanah as it is Oktoberfest) or give it warm spices and simmer it into a tender chutney. Or use it raw to brighten a creamy chicken salad, a cheese board or in a ploughman’s lunch as an alternative to Branston pickle. Makes 7 pints
Note: This recipe was made to use a half-flat of fruit, but feel free to scale it up or down as needed. I use calcium chloride (sometimes sold as “pickle crisp”) granules to help my pickles keep a firmer texture for canning, but this is totally optional. If you want to preserve these using boiling water bath canning, I’d cut the fruit into spears instead of dice, and follow the processing instructions on the National Center for Home Food Preservation website.
Ingredients
3 pounds Asian pears
3 pounds crisp, unripe Fuyu persimmons
3 tablespoons fresh grated ginger
2 or 3 red chiles, thinly sliced (optional)
2 cups white vinegar
3 cups water
1 cup sugar
¼ cup sea salt
Instructions
- Peel, core and cube (or cut into spears) the Asian pears and persimmons. In a large mixing bowl, combine the fruit, ginger and chiles, then divide the mixture between your jars.
- In a medium pot, bring the vinegar, water, salt and sugar to a boil, then pour the hot brine into the jars over the packed fruit. Seal the jars and either process them in a boiling water bath canner (see note above) or allow them to cool before storing them in the fridge.