H is for hoshigaki

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For the uninitiated, these odd little things --clothespinned to a line at Penryn Orchard Specialties’ stall at Wednesday’s Santa Monica farmers market -- are hoshigaki. They’re Hachiya persimmons that have been peeled, dried and hand-massaged using an old Japanese method. Penryn’s Jeff Rieger has been making hoshigaki for four years now, selling them around the holidays, along with fresh persimmons, mandarins, clementines, Asian pears and other fruit. ‘It’s an old Japanese food art,’ said Rieger as he enthusiastically described the process of air-drying the fruit, which is massaged both to stretch and smooth the exterior and to help bring the fructose to the outside to form the distinctive light coating of natural sugars. Although some California farmers have been producing hoshigaki for decades, it’s still a very specialized market. Not so in Japan: My sister, who lives in Tokyo, e-mailed that she can buy them at her corner grocery. (OK, I need to go visit her.)

They’re furiously addictive: sweet, floral and faintly spicy, with hints of cinnamon and lemon. A rich, dark orange in color with what looks like the faintest dusting of powdered sugar on the outside. Hoshigaki have an incredible texture -- tender, moist and dense, and not the slightest bit leathery. Although you can dice them and add them to baked goods, Rieger suggests eating them plain, biting into them while holding the dried base of the stem, maybe with a demitasse of espresso. He’s right: Why mitigate the taste, or the highly pleasurable sensation of eating a whole one, slowly, while holding it delicately in your fingers? H is for happy too.

Hoshigaki, Penryn Orchards, Wednesdays at the Santa Monica farmers market, (916) 769-5462. About $3 each, or $33 a pound; sold in boxes of nine (boxes range from slightly under a pound to almost a pound and a half).

-- Amy Scattergood