While I was up in VT, I got the pleasure of finally seeing Jackie and Alex, and Jackie brought with her many, many persimmons. Apparently, living in California has its benefits, like fruit trees in your backyard. Snow vs fruit trees... snow vs fruit trees... snow vs fruit trees... eh I'll take snow. Anyway, we didn't know what to do with this many persimmons, but decided that persimmon tarts would be the perfect thing. Except, persimmon pie has a much better ring to it. So, we'll call this persimmon pie.
Jackie had never made a pie crust before, so I made her do the work, in the interest of "learning". Or lazy. You choose. We sliced the persimmons into rounds, and peeled them. We weren't sure how much they would break down in the oven, so the first pie we pre-baked before putting in the persimmons and finishing it off. They didn't break down much at all, in fact they were still really solid, so we put them in initially with the second pie, and that worked out too. They taste a little slimy, but they were pretty slimy to begin with, too. Maybe slimy is the wrong word, I mean they tasted good, just kind of slimy. In a good way. They were very pretty tarts, in the end. The persimmons were so sweet on their own that they didn't need much sugar, but we added some lemon juice. That was good too.
Jackie with a pile o' persimmons.
So here is the recipe. Its pretty free-form.
Pie crust
2.5C flour
1 tsp salt
1 stick frozen butter
4-8tbs cold water
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Mix together the flour and salt in a big bowl. Using the big holes of a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into flour mixture. Use your fingertips to mix it up, squeezing it around, for a minute or so. Start adding the water, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough starts to come together. You don't want it too wet, if you can squeeze it together and it sticks, thats probably wet enough. Pack your dough into two balls, and wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 20-30min. This lets the flour hydrate, or something like that. After 30min take it out and roll it into flat pie crusts. Put these into two pie dishes, and try to make them look pretty. Or you could make a galette, and just fold the edges over the fruit free-form.
It'll take about 12 persimmons to fill two pie crusts, slice them into rounds and then peel them. layer them into the pie crusts, overlapping them enough to make them look pretty. Splash some lemon juice over the persimmons, and sprinkle them with a little sugar if you want. Bake for 10-20min, keep checking until the crust is a little brown on the edges.
