Ohhh, summer. How I love thee. You deliver, time after time, year after year, bounties of fresh fruit – from the biggest blueberries and blackberries to the prettiest peaches and plums. Choosing a favorite fruit is like choosing a favorite child – how could you possibly? But…we all have our favorites, don’t we? Come on, admit it (I won’t tell). I’m a girl of the tropics and I like my fruit that way too. Mangoes, guavas, papayas, pineapples, and passion fruit – pass them my way. At the top of the list, sits lychees and longans, my all-time favorites. Longans aren’t quite in season yet, so I’ll just tell you a little about my lychee friends.
They grow on trees native to Southern China and are known for their sweet, fragrant and delicious fleshy, pale-white seed covering. Gewurztraminer grapes and wines share many of the same floral notes. “Chicken-Tongue” lychees have small, undeveloped fruit and are prized due to having more flesh than seed. So prized in fact, legend has it that an Emperor of the Tang Dynasty lost his throne because he demanded fresh lychees delivered on a regular basis – at great cost to the Chinese people. (Typical politician – carelessly spending money that isn’t theirs). Lychees do not improve in flavor once picked. Twelve lychees have less than seventy calories – though I never stop at just twelve. And finally, lychees were the fruit of choice for our family road trips growing up and will always hold a special place in my heart. Lychees…how I love thee.
Do you have a favorite fruit story?
My 5-year-old niece is absolutely crazy for lychees – she’ll eat a bowl of them in no time!
Mangoes! I remember clambering up the branches of our Black Mango tree with my father. He’d climb higher than I would (I was too chicken!) – and he’d throw down ripe sweet mangoes to me. Two for me, one for the waiting bucket! Such a great memory!! I have only ever had Lychee once – and it was experimental. They sell them here for $10BZ ($5us) a bag!! Was not going to spend that much on it, but it was quite nice!!
hi mary – wow, i would kill to have a mango tree nearby! what a sweet, sweet memory with your father. if you have a chinatown nearby, the vendors there tend to sell the lychees for much less.
I have never had lychees, but my favorite fruit is the pomegranate! As a child, my family was on welfare so when mom would return from the fruit market with a pomegranate it was a treat!!! I remember waiting with baited breath for her to fish out all of my seeds from the waxy exterior. I’d sneak a few fruit/juicy seeds before the time was right and she’d tell me to be patient. Who has patience for such goodies!?!?! Thanks for the lychees story!!!
hi christina – i can just picture that scene and must say, you had great restraint for a child…waiting for each seed to be scooped out. what a treat – thank you for sharing your wonderful story.
i LOVE lychees! Have you had a lychee bubble tea? SO good!!
hi devan – yes, i love lychee bubble tea! though my favorite bubble tea of all time is taro.
I love my Lychees chilled!
Try this easy but tasty dessert:
Peel and seed Lychee, stuff with cream cheese, chill, eat!
I always picked plums in my neighbors yard as a child…so those were my favorite.
I have never tried lychees…we don’t get them often in Michigan! I may have to look! I wouldnt even know how to eat them? Do they have to be peeled? They sound so good!
hi courtney – yes, just rinse them in cold water just before you eat them. then bite into the middle of each, like you would a large cherry or grape, peel back the skin – and devour! just be careful not to swallow the big, black seed in the center! :)
Just went to Chinatown over the weekend where lychees reign supreme in the grocery stores. It would have been cool to buy them but I didn’t know how to eat or prepare them!
hi hillary – well, now you have a good excuse to head back to chinatown! :) (see courtney’s comment above for how to eat them).
I always thought Lychees and longans were the same thing.. shame on me! Thanks for the clarification. My favorite fruit is definitely lemon. I used to dip them in sugar and just eat them off the rind!
I love fresh lychees, too bad that the ones that sells here are not so fresh…yummie!
As a child, I spent the summers at my grandmother’s home in Trinidad. She had a large pomerac tree (aka Malay Apple) which towered over the house. I spent hours climbing that tree, eating both the ripe and unripe (with lemon juice and salt) fruit. My 9 year old neighbor broke his arm when he fell out of the tree, but he climbed it with me the next day when his cast was dry.
I rarely find the fruit in New York today, but the crisp refreshing flavor is still a vivid memory.
hi bromography – what a terrific memory at your grandmother’s home. your 9 year old is one brave boy to get right back up on the tree after his cast had dried! maybe you can sneak a pomerac seedling in your bag next time! :)
I’ve never had lychees. I definitely want to try them now!!
Love lychees and can pop them ln my mouth like popcorn.
Hear, hear and ode to lychees.
I’ve never had them before and for sure want to try them now!
I have never had lychees. I do not even think I have seen them.
I am interested and would love to get my hands on some now.
It brings me back in time. In Vietnam, my aunt had a whole orchard in Cantho (countryside). It was juicy and soooo sweet. The ones sold here are grown in Florida and not as flavorful and sweet as the one in Asia. I love tropical fruits like longans, jackfruits, cheromoya. Yum!
I am a big lychee fan as well – used to eat them a lot more when I lived in Australia though and they were more readily available.
I am from Nashville, TN and had never even heard of a lychee until I moved to Hawaii. One of my co-workers there grew them in her yard at home and brought in a bag full of them to work and shared them with me. I thought it was the strangest little fruit I had ever seen. As I peeled off the outer skin, I remarked that it looked just like a peeled grape. One of my many memories of living in paradise.
I had lychees for the first time a couple years ago while on vacation in Hawaii. We cannot get them at all where I live in Maine, unless I wanted to special order them canned in syrup. Guess I’m just going to have to schedule another trip to Kauai again! The Estate Coffee there is fabulous, too, if any of you ever get to go!
We’re stationed in Okinawa, and our first summer here I saw these strange fruits growing on a tree in my yard next to ascerola and shikwasa. After trying them I finally understood why I kept finding older Japanese ladies in my yard clearing my trees at 3am. Viva lychee!
When I was a kid we lived in Namibia and ate Lychees all the time. My family used to sit over the kitchen sink and compete for the biggest/smallest/strangest, etc seeds.
In high school I lived in India where my cook would give me big bowls of them at night when I got hungry.
Wish I knew where to buy fresh lychees. I’d love to make a compote. Wonder how they’d taste poached in sake?
(BTW, I’m a spanking new food blogger. I’d appreciate a quick visit if you have the time.)
-Kelly
I adore lychees, sadly I don’t seem to find them that often up here in Sonoma. It’s one thing I miss about LA, the fresh lychees.
We had a cherry tree-lined driveway at our home on the coast of British Columbia, and blackberry bushes literally everywhere around town. I remember walking to the beach on warm summer days with an ice cream pail in my hand. We’d snack on blackberries the whole way there, then gather them on the way home for our ice cream. Other days my dad would go shake the cherry trees and we’d scurry around collecting them for whatever dessert my mom was whipping up that night. Then she would preserve the rest and we enjoyed them year-round. It’s no wonder that berry and stone fruit desserts are always my favourites.
My boyfriend spent a month in China when he was in college studying agriculture. When we came across lychees in the grocery store yesterday he went nuts! He went on and on about how they ate these all the time in China. I was suprised, as he is such a picky eater, he ate the whole bag we bought and only shared one with me!
My favorite drink is a Lychee Martini! I buy canned lychees from a local Chinese grocery, which are delicious. I mix pear absolute vodka, juice from the canned lycees, 7 up and add a few lychees on a cocktail skewer…so good!