Use firm sweet persimmons — the soft ripe kind will not slice. And always toast the walnuts in a dry pan first.
2 servings15 min
Toast the walnuts in a dry pan over low heat for 3–4 minutes. Take them out as soon as the aroma rises and let them cool.
Wash the persimmons, cut out the calyx and quarter them twice into eighths, skin on. If the skin is thin, leave it — that is where the fibre is.
Rinse the rocket in cold water and shake it completely dry. Wet leaves make the dressing slide off.
Stir the olive oil, lemon juice, honey, salt and pepper into the Greek yoghurt until smooth.
Lay the rocket on a plate, arrange the persimmon on it, and dot the dressing over rather than pouring it.
Crumble the cooled walnuts over by hand.
Serve immediately. Persimmon weeps if it sits.
It has to be firm sweet persimmon. Soft ripe fruit collapses under the knife, and astringent varieties are unpleasant uncooked. Sweet varieties lose their soluble tannins as they grow, which is what makes them edible while still hard.
Toasting the walnuts is about bitterness, not aroma. The bitter, astringent note in walnuts comes from tannins in the skin; brief low heat softens it while the fat melts and the nuttiness comes forward. Never use high heat — walnuts are 65% fat and scorch fast.
Dotting the dressing rather than pouring it is about the persimmon's sugar. At 12.5 g per 100 g, the fruit is sweet enough already. Coat everything evenly and the salad tastes of nothing but sweetness. The yoghurt's acidity has to interrupt it for the fruit to read.
Rocket is here for the same reason. Its bitterness balances the sugar.
On the numbers, two servings of this salad carry about 13 g of fibre — 12 g from two persimmons (around 340 g of flesh), the rest from walnuts and rocket. That is half the 25 g daily target.
Beta-carotene is fat-soluble. It is what makes persimmon orange, and the olive oil and walnut fat help absorb it. There is a reason the dressing carries oil.
If you are counting sugar, two persimmons hold about 42 g. Split two ways that is 21 g each, which is not a small amount. With diabetes, drop to one persimmon and add more rocket.
Do not make this your only food on an empty stomach. Sweet persimmon carries little bezoar risk, but the rule is not to eat much persimmon on an empty stomach.
Fruits
Early researchA trial feeding 9–15 g a day of persimmon tannin fibre for 12 weeks lowered total cholesterol. But that was not eating persimmons — it was a fibre fraction extracted from unripe fruit, baked into bars. And there is a separate caution about astringent persimmon on an empty stomach.
Nuts & seeds
Moderate evidenceWalnuts carry 9.1 g of ALA per 100 g, an order of magnitude beyond other nuts. But the rate at which ALA converts to EPA and DHA is very low.
Vegetables
Moderate evidenceA dose-response meta-analysis of 75 randomised trials in 1,823 people. Medium-term systolic pressure fell 0.48 mmHg per millimole of nitrate. That is a small figure, and since the USDA carries no nitrate value for arugula, there is no way to say how many millimoles a plateful holds.
Dairy & eggs
Moderate evidenceIt has nearly three times the protein of regular yogurt not because of any special ingredient, but because the liquid was removed. Calcium goes down in the same step.