persimmon and lettuce salad

Persimmons are an elusive breed. They arrive in November and stick around until January. I love the taste, but the ones I used for this salad left my mouth tasting fuzzy and I had an unexplained headache all nigh long.

Curious about the fuzzy taste these fruit left, I looked them up. The fuzz is due to high levels of tannins in the unripe astringent fruit. Tannins. Now I had a reason for my headache.

Apparently,  there are two types of persimmon, the astringent kind and the non-astrigent kind. I used hachiya (astringent) but the recipe calls for fuyu (non-astringent). So when you make this salad get the right fruit. Or you might not like the results.

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