Two years ago, Joanne Neft, director of Placer County's Agriculture Marketing Program, was admiring groves of persimmon trees flanking a road in Newcastle when she was struck by the extraordinary amount of fruit being eaten by birds or rotting on the ground.
She knew immediately why so much food was going to waste. "We have the fastest-growing county in California," she says, citing the steady march of development north from Sacramento and Roseville. "Many of the farmers here are retiring or dying . . . so a lot of the orchards are left untended."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday November 02, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Fruit processing -- Last Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine article about \o7hoshigaki, or dried persimmons, misspelled the surname of Jeff Rieger, of Rieger's Penryn Orchard Specialties, as Reiger.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday November 13, 2005 Home Edition Los Angeles Times Magazine Part I Page 6 Lat Magazine Desk 1 inches; 38 words Type of Material: Correction
The article "Massaging the Persimmon" (Style, Oct. 30) misspelled the surname of Jeff Rieger, of Rieger's Penryn Orchard Specialties, as Reiger. In addition, the recipe for \o7hoshigaki cannoli should have noted that it was adapted from Laurence Hauben.
Neft knew that the county's agricultural decline meant that someday she might not be able to get one of her favorite delicacies: \o7hoshigaki\f7, or dried persimmons. "I have a friend, Martha Miyamura, who once owned a farm with her late husband, Kay. Every December they would make me a gift of \o7hoshigaki\f7, which they usually gave away as gifts or sold to the Asian markets. It's pure ambrosia . . . a sweet, concentrated taste of persimmon."
She decided that she would revive the art of \o7hoshigaki\f7 in Placer County. Though it seems odd to apply "art" to a process of drying fruit, the technique is reported to be hundreds of years old. "Red Persimmons," a 2001 film by the late Shinsuke Ogawa and Peng Xiaolian, documented the process practiced by farmers in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. Carefully peeling the Hachiya variety of persimmon before they ripened, the \o7hoshigaki\f7 artisans would leave the stems on and tie them with a string so they could be hung up for drying. After the exposed skin dried a few days later, the villagers would then gently massage the fruit to break down the pulp and membranes inside.
Every few days for about a month, the process would be repeated with thousands of persimmons until they dried and a fine coating of fructose came to the surface, as if the fruit had been dipped in powdered sugar. In a 2004 report, UC Davis graduate students wrote that \o7hoshigaki \f7is different from other dried fruit "because the drying process is deeply influenced by Japanese values of hard work, perfection and dedication."
\o7Hoshigaki\f7 arrived in Placer County with Japanese immigrants at the turn of the last century. Tosh Kuratomi and his wife, Chris, run Otow Orchard, a diverse 39 1/2 -acre farm in Granite Bay that was started by her grandparents in about 1909. He believes that the county's claim as the "Fruit Shipping Capital of the World" during the first two decades of the 20th century was partly due to the dedication of the Japanese immigrants. According to Neft, Placer County shipped 152 million pounds of fruit in 1923.
