Pears
Why make you shudder
Lots of folk have opinions on just how bad nashi pears are to eat. “Oh no, too watery.” “No flavour, bland.” “I don’t like them.” The nashi or ‘Asian’ pears they’re talking about are all ones bought from a supermarket, and that’s where you’re going wrong if you have a similar opinion and haven’t tried one fresh and at the perfect picking point.
As with apples and all the other pipfruit we can buy in supermarkets, it has been sent back to the local market because it’s not good enough to export. They are too big or too small, picked early and cool stored, not fully tree-ripened, not symmetrical enough.
Their bland flavour is a result of our imperfect supply chain, and our status as retail consumers of export rejects.
But try a nashi, or any pear, fresh from the tree, picked in ideal conditions, and they are one of the most delicious fruit you can eat. Nashi suit New Zealand’s climate, especially where it’s a bit like France: nice cool winters, plenty of rain, good drainage. Similar conditions can also be found in Japan, the home of the nashi ( Pyrus pyrifolia). They will handle quite stoney ground and cold winters with snow, so if you can grow plums and cherries inland, it’s another staple variety.
Nashi can be early or late season. The best performer in NZ seems to be Hosui, but I have a good seedling pip-grown one which fruits late. The late fruit lingers on if the wasps stay away, and ripens to a deep orange-brown.
These are beautiful trees too. Give it good shelter, plenty of manure, water it through northern droughts, and prune every year quite mercilessly, and you’ll get the most thrilling blossom display. It will attract bees to all your pipfruit trees, helping other pears to be pollinated, then bear the sweetest droplets of juice you’ll ever taste.
Like all pears, if you pick and eat them the very day before they rot you will be transported to fruit heaven, and nashi are no exception. Visitors here try the ripe fruit offered to them and can’t believe the difference between a store-bought one and the juicy flesh that’s similar to a melon.
A real organic ripe nashi will never disappoint. It will be golden, crisp but yielding, bursting with juice, and full of sunlight and natural sugars. Perhaps you will find you do like nashis after all.