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.