While the unphotogenic nature of this odd candy may seem to have something to do with the waxy translucence of the packaging, I can report that, even unwrapped, it does pretty much look like a turd that’s been hung out to dry in the sun. The same can be said for the churchkhela’s fresher cousin, although I imagine these confections fare better when encased within the traditional layer of thickened fruit juice, instead of one formed from intractable high fructose corn syrup. The processed imitation, despite its “aphrodisiac” claims, seems more silly than anything, encased in a soft plasticine aspic that demands knife-cutting rather than direct biting chomping. The taste is passable, with some hints of grape molasses (technically grape must, according to the ingredients list) and large walnut chunks helping to combat the otherwise-overwhelming artificiality on display. As for real stuff, despite churchkhela’s popularity beyond its native Georgia, into Turkey (the origin point of this snack), Armenia, Russia and beyond, I have not seen it anywhere in NYC. The Turkish on the packaging describes a “grape walnut dried sausage,” (despite what the Engish/German/French translations read); I imagine the fresh version’s range is limited to places where grapes grow in abundance, their byproducts funneled into mass sweet treat diversions. Georgia is wine country, and so blessed with these sort of resources, necessitating similar overflow desserts like pelamushi, a beautiful, pretty delicious grape pudding. Churchkhela can’t compete in the looks department (at its best it seems to resemble a poorly made candle or a fire cracker), but I imagine that, consumed on some remote Georgian vineyard in the fading evening light, it can make for a pretty magical experience in its own right.
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There’s something oddly evocative about the packaging for Marukawa’s fruit gums, with their neat little square boxes (containing three four small gums apiece) drawing aesthetic parallels to some bygone style of design (taxonomic charts? '60s-era juice bars? frozen juice concentrate packages?) that I can’t exactly put my finger on. The gum itself is equivalently mysterious, offering an ephemeral burst of faint, Chiclet-like fruit flavor, then evaporating into nothingness. The only issue with this is that, these being gum pellets, you’re left with the sallow, flavorless grub in your mouth as a reminder of the candy’s lingering connection to the cruel corporeal world. Another key reminder; the main breadwinner of the Marukawa line is not these ethereal little confections, but this garish product, which resorts to the allure of acrobatic musician bears and a free tattoo sticker to lure in a (likely juvenile?) audience. I imagine the taste is also a lot less subtle.
Beyond warily eyeing them during their bi-seasonal autumn/winter appearance at the borders of the supermarket fruit section, I’ve never really known what to do with the persimmon, a fruit that seems firmly (if not insistently) Asian in character. Finally, this year, emboldened by a recipe that provided a method for synthesizing these mysterious orange globes into bread form, I picked up half a dozen in Chinatown, where stores seem to be especially bountiful during the fall season. Here I disabused myself of a long-time misconception - that persimmons are mushy and/or pulpy. Maybe this has something to do with their offhand resemblance to a tomato, or a since-forgotten encounter with an overripe persimmon on a store shelf, but the ones I purchased were actually hard, with a fibrous inside that in some ways resembled a pear. Even after brown-bagging these guys for two weeks they stayed hard, and I was eventually forced to unceremoniously mulch out the semi-soft meat inside with a spoon.
I’ve also since learned that persimmons are not exclusively Asian, despite the majority of production occurring there, with the Japanese ‘kaki’ variant being the source of the main crop produced for global consumption. These are generally split into two categories, the rounder fuyu (which I purchased) and the heart-shaped, more-bitter hachiya, which requires a bit more massaging (and/or ripening) to get to an edible state. These widely available versions, as is often the case, are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s also the legendary date plum, one of the first fruits cultivated by humans and a favorite of the ancient Greeks, the Texas/Mexican persimmon, the charred-looking chocolate persimmon, and the velvety Filipino mabolo. Last but not least is the American persimmon, which grows wild across the Eastern United States, originally cultivated by Native American tribes. These are evidently quite bitter, and eating them before they’re ripe can lead to a coagulated mass of acids and food known as a bezoar, a nasty condition (do not Google image search this, especially if you’re planning on eating in the next twelve hours) that wreaks the most havoc in animals; humans can usually break them down through the nifty trick of drinking cola. With an appearance that sits somewhere between root and poop, the bezoar can also be polished into jewelry; Queen Elizabeth I had one in her crown jewels, cast in gold and apparently given as a gift from noted Renaissance Man John Dee. This gift likely had something to do with the bezoar’s reputation as a means of protecting against poisoning. All this from a fruit that seemed pretty much worthless at first glance. I grew up on Long Island, and notwithstanding the general shift in lifestyle that comes with moving from Nassau County to “the City,” have spent my entire life on this ridiculous fish-shaped stretch of sand. Yet while I’m more inclined to exploring than most, I still haven’t gotten close to covering any significant amount of the state parks, wildlife refuges and weird wide open spaces that litter the western half of the island, many of them hidden among the myriad necks and inlets of the rugged North Shore. This weekend I managed to make a tiny bit of headway, on a jaunt to Fort Totten that semi-accidentally devolved into a bit of trespassing around some poorly-preserved military ruins. In the shadow of the Throgs Neck bridge, the once-busy, since-decommissioned fort now houses a cluster of semi-active mini-bases (Army, Coast Guard and NYPD), with former officer’s quarters downgraded into makeshift storage facilities, piles of boxes now pressing up against the windows of once-charming screened-in porches. Things seem to get even weirder on the other side of the park.
The Pringles Man, at one point, seemed to possess definitively human facial features, before gradually being reduced to an ovoid, anthropomorphic egg creature with the tousled hair and moustache of a 19th century barkeep. Reducing its logo to a cipher, the brand’s design budget instead seems to have been directed toward the rest of the packaging, finding perhaps its most brilliant conceit yet in the concept of a single hooked Pringle, hanging alongside two rosy Serrano hams. These Spanish delicacies, while not on par with the world-class jamón iberico (treated so luxuriously that I recently spotted one outfitted with its own sun-deflecting jacket) still rest safely on the level of classy foods not easily approximated by potato chips. I didn’t taste these Pringles, which were purchased as a souvenir, and thus can’t vouch for their likeness to charcuterie, but they serve as yet another indicator of the slightly off-kilter world of foreign snack foods, where everything is at once familiar and totally alien.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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