Back again with me- your enthusiastic Yamanashi blog writer! This time i would like to talk about "Korogaki"!
What is that?
It's a dry fruit from persimmon, or kaki in Japanese. Generally there are 2 types of kaki, the sweet one, and the non-sweet one. You can easily eat the sweet one, but not the non-sweet one.
So the Japanese back then thinks, "hmm, how do we eat the non-sweet one?"
Their answer? just make it dry!
This is korogaki's main characteristic, it's all sweet! there's no non-sweet korogaki!
And guess what?
Because its a dry fruit, you can enjoy this dry fruit 365 days! now thats what i call a bargain!
But, how do they make this?
It's a difficult and long process. After the harvest of the kaki fruit, the korogaki makers have to dry the kaki, by hanging it or by place at the tables or some sort. They have to dry the fruit according to the sunshine, so they cannot dry it everyday! now thats a lot of work!
But not just that! to make the fruit sweet, they have to kind of "press" the kaki fruit at the center, so the sweetness can appear from the fruit! and they do this one by one, everyday, every few hours. now this is a lot of work!
They do that everyday, almost for 2-3 months until its ready to sell!
Pretty complicated right?
Korogaki is naturally sweetened and didn't use any kind of preservative material, so its healthy, too!
This is a hidden gem from the Yamanashi Prefecture! i highly recommend this to you, readers!
See you another time!
-Irvan
