Wild Maryland Cookbook - Maryland Recipies by Maryland Residents

I am excited to share the news that the MD DNR finally released this cookbook located Here.  I submitted 3 recipes hoping one would make it in the publication.  Well, it turns out they accepted and included all three!  The cookbook contains over 60 recipes from foraging to deer and fishing quarry.   The menu of recipes can be found here at the View all Recipes Link.

I am honored to have included some of the recipes located on this very Blog!

A Toast to Wild Persimmons - Winemaking Recipe

Originally published in Traditional Bowhunter Magazine Dec/Jan 2022 issue.

 

 I eased from the dark woods though the post-dawn mist into the light of an old overgrown field. I moved with the cautious speed of a cold snail while scanning for the slightest movement.  My eyes zipped to a brown and white flick as a doe's rump moved behind a wrist thick tree trunk.  Despite the deer standing only 25 yards distant, another such tree was positioned, of course, right through the kill zone.  I stood quivering with a mounting excitement as the old doe looked up in frozen rigidity.  Did she see me, or was she just looking about as deer do?  Heart thumping in my throat now, she lowers her head and begins again to feed among the tall grasses taking that next step clear of the tree.  Instinctively feeling this was the right time, I raised my bow while drawing and settled into anchor.  Staring at a hair out of place above her front leg, my arrow was gone without thought.  The orange fletching zipped through the spot I was looking at.  She exploded crashing through the brambles and shrubs leaving me breathing hard while slightly shaken, exhilarated, and elated.  I love that feeling!

The old field had not been mowed for a decade on the old farm property.  That doe was intent on eating the sweet persimmon fruit that littered the ground.  Trees were starting to take over from the thick rose, thistle, and primary colonizers to woody trees.  Several large old persimmon trees were located along the old field edge and animals had helped to disperse the seeds. These trees now 15-20 feet tall, along with a few honey locust and poplar, grew plentiful in the old field.  The majority of these trees provided shade and cover, but very few actually produced fruit.

There are several varieties of persimmon trees, though the kind that grow wild in the Eastern Appalachian area where I live are the Diospyros virginiana or American Persimmon.   Several varieties of Asian persimmons are available in markets. Other transplants grow wild including the Japanese Hachiya variety that are common in California, and the black variety native to Mexico that can be found in the American southwest.  

The American are "astringent" type, meaning if you bite into a unripe fruit it is so bitter you may lose your sense of taste altogether for 20 minutes.  You would swear it would never be something fit for consumption due to amount of tannin.  Once the fruit ripens and softens however, it becomes quite sweet with a cinnamon overtone.  

Important to the hunter, the fruit is eaten by many animals including whitetail deer and wild hogs.  They are a favorite of coyotes, opossums, and raccoons.  The fruit is high in vitamin C and is traditionally made into breads, puddings, and alcoholic beverages by our pioneer ancestors.  

 

Each Autumn, my son and I, head into the brush with buckets to collect the fruit.  The ripe fruit is soft to the touch with skin that is slightly opaque to the eye.  They fall from the branches easily if you shake the branch or tree.  The green fruits are difficult to remove and sometimes break off a piece of the stem.  We keep ripe and green separated into their own buckets.  The ripe fruits can be eaten, though care must be taken to not swallow the hard seeds which will cause illness if ingested.  

 

We process the fresh ripe fruit right away by using a potato masher to squash 6-8 fruits at a time in a fine mesh metal strainer.  The pulp eventually squeezes through into a bowl, leaving the bitter skin and hard seeds behind.  Most recipes call for 2 cups, so I place the pulp into quart sized freezer bags in 2 cup batches.  The bags will freeze flat and take up little space in your freezer until ready.

 

The unripe fruit must be ripened by placing them into a paper grocery bag with an apple or banana and rolled closed to sit for up to a week.  I check them every few days and process the ripe ones. The ethylene gas from the grocery store fruit will help the fruit ripen quickly.  Old lore says that a frost is needed to ripen the fruit, but I have found that putting them into the freezer or refrigerator for any time period will not speed up the ripening.  

Breads, puddings, and jams are tasty, but my main use for the persimmon is making wine!  My son's Taekwondo instructor informed me Persimmon wine is very popular in Korea, so I gave it a try.  Now, I cannot see wasting them on jams and breads.

Wine making at home is not that difficult and requires little investment in equipment.  I started by using wide mouth quart mason jars I already owned for canning food and do small batches at a time.  I found a company that sells stainless steel wide mouth lids and water airlocks for fermenting other foods, but you could use your old glass gallon cider jugs with a balloon and needle hole on the end also.  I will describe the recipe I used for quart sized jars.

 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup persimmon pulp

2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/2 packet of wine making yeast

1 cut up raisin

1 tablespoon of pectin enzyme

Add the room temperature pulp and sugar to the jar. Then add the tea, lemon juice (for acid), pectin enzyme (to clarify), and a chopped raisin for some extra yeast nutrients to help things grow.  

Meanwhile add the 1/2 a packet of wine yeast to a small cup and hydrated with water to activate it for 15 minutes or so, swirling every few minutes.

Then, add the yeast and stir before filling the jar to within a few inches of the top with tap water to allow some expansion of material during fermentation.

Close the lid, fill the airlock, and date the jars before moving them to a storage area about 70-76 degrees (my den bookshelf works). In about 5 weeks it is time to filter out the wine if they stopped bubbling and fermenting.  I use a strainer lined with cheese cloth and re-bottled the liquid in other mason jar additional aging. After a month or two more of aging, I rack the wine into a flip top bottle (or you could just use another mason jar).  For this I use a small section of aquarium tubing to siphon off the liquid, being careful to leave the sediment behind.  The bottles should mellow for about another month before consuming. I can say it pairs very well with roast venison.  Cheers to the persimmon, that provides a natural food source to attract game as well as a fall harvest and a delicious wine!

You can also do larger batches in gallon jugs!