Persimmon Toast
I’ve returned from Spain determined to start a healthy life full of nutritious food and lots of exercise. I’m giving this enthusiasm a week or two before it fades, but even if no miraculous changes in my lifestyle will take place, I really should start eating proper breakfast again. And I’m not talking about churros.
I’ve mentioned before that I have a tendency to skip breakfast but when I do eat it, my default choice is avocado toast. Yes, yes, I know, this is everybody’s default choice, but no other breakfast food combines taste, health and speed as well as this – there’s a reason why hastag avocado has been used on Instagram almost three million times.
But even I cannot eat avocado toast every single morning (plus, I cannot post it on Instagram, can I?), so here’s an alternative for you: persimmon toast. Persimmons may not be praised as miracle food as often as avocados, but there’s much good to say about them. They are a very good source of dietary fiber, contain lots of antioxidants and have a good amount of vitamins (C and B in particular) and minerals like potassium and copper. Then there’s the taste (sweet! juicy! exotic!). And the texture (jelly-like!). And the colour (a better orange than that of oranges!).
If you buy persimmons, there are mostly two varieties available: one that looks like a tomato and the other that looks more like a huge orange plum. I will not go into botanical details here, the practical thing to remember is that the big ones need to be really ripe before you eat them, otherwise they are astringent. You can slice the persimmons and put the slices on some wholegrain toast, but I prefer to mash the flesh of the berry (I promised no botanical details, but yes, it’s a berry!): just cut the thing in half and scoop the inside out.
You can be more creative with your toast, of course. Persimmon works beautifully with soft goat cheese, so this is one option. Incidentally, it also pairs well with avocado: it tastes great (I would add some salt to the avocado, to increase the contrast between the two toppings) and the colour combination is even better. The common avocado toasts of Instagram have nothing on this.
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YUM!!!!
and I like the idea of pairing with goat cheese 🙂
I highly recommend it: the sweetness of the persimmon and the slight sourness of the goat cheese match perfectly. You could also add some rucola leaves and fig balsamico vinegar and you’ve got a proper meal.
Oh, delicious! And yes, healthy too. When I was a kid, my mother would make pudding sometimes by dressing sliced persimmon with honey and a scratch of nutmeg and let me have a scoop of vanilla ice cream with it. In New Zealand persimmon are the sort of fruit tree (like feijoas and lemons) that everyone plants and no one bothers with: the fruit lies around rotting on the ground between lawn mowings., although, oddly, if they turn up in the supermarket, they are quite expensive to buy. I remember once being given a bucketful when I was newly married and deciding to make jam with them because I thought they would behave like quinces. They didn’t, ummm, repay the effort.
How I envy you for those trees! But I guess I would also feel differently if persimmons were common here. When I was a kid, I had a hierarchy of berries, with the wild strawberries as the most desirable and redcurrants as the least appreciated. And to think of it, all the “good” berries were difficult to get and redcurrants were so despised because our grandparents had bushes and bushes of them (and we had to pick them, too, that didn’t help, either).
There’s something about Spain. Every time I’m there I imagine how this time it really is the fresh start for me and healthy lifestyle. Now I’m back home for almost three weeks and again I have to admit that old habits die hard and I’m not particulary healthy person. 🙂
Where in Spain did you go? I will never be a truly healthy person, but I do try not to be completely irresponsible (well, at least not all the time). Have just made pumpkin muffins, which I’ve decided are healthy enough.