So lychee is a Chinese fruit and is not from Hawaii, but I had something else planned for today and then the picture file got corrupted. So I’ll have to save that one for another day.
I’m also putting it in there on the basis that if you go to Hawaii, you will notice its pan-Asian heritage immediately–Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese–”chop suey” as my grandmother likes to say. And this heritage emerges distinctly in its eclectic cuisine which employs island-specific foods (poi), European imports (malasadas, kalua pig), American influences (potato salad alongside kimchee, loco moco), and almost any kind of Asian food you can think of. This includes lychee, as many Hawaii residents grow them. They are quite beloved over there.
You can get lychee of course on the mainland, usually in Chinatown, which is where I bought these (Honolulu’s Chinatown, that is–it’s one of our family traditions to escort my 91-year-old great Aunty Margaret on her weekly shopping expedition and for a woman who walks a speed of .002 of a mile/hr, it’s amazing how quickly we’ll lose her). Anyway, the last time I was there, lychees were just coming into season and there was a guy standing with a new box shouting at the top of his lungs “LYCHEES!” (but in Chinese, of course). So I figured I’d give them a whirl. Ripeness is indicated by redness (these were not quite ripe enough, but they were still okay) and they don’t ripen off the tree, so do choose wisely.
Lychees taste like milder, sweeter grapes. They have that kind of gentle Jello-like flavor that I associate with Chinese almond float, which is condensed milk gelatin served with fruit cocktail–and I know that probably doesn’t sound all that great in the abstract, but it’s a lovely light flavor. It’s highly appropriate lychees are a summertime fruit because their sweetness is light and cool, not cloying. To eat a lychee, peel the outside, exposing the white translucent flesh and then suck the flesh away from its central brown pit (do not eat the seed–it’s a little poisonous). You can also peel the lychee in its entirety and pull out the seed to eat them in a similar form as you would find them canned, but the first way would be an interesting dinner-party experiment somewhat along the lines of fondue or slurping oysters–a little novel and cheeky, but so sensuously epicurean.
RECIPE: Summertime Appetizer: Stuffed Lychee
Filed under: Clean Food Daily, Chinese, fruit, hawaii, lychee, tropical fruit
