A fleeting wrinkle on the produce calendar, I wait all year for this.
Lychee usually makes an appearance in China Town from May through June,beckoning me like so many little fingers of love from branches dangling below tacked up street string.
Lychee looks more like a fossil then a fruit, but their taste is unerringly sweet and deliciously perfumey.
Simply peel the pink shell and savor the translucent flesh, devouring all but the cnetral pit.
The pit is mildly poisonous.(Not quite rattlesnakes or gossip but nasty non-the less).
I've also seen them in supermarkets as late as August clustered in plastic containers off the twig. However, Once off the branch, they deteriorate quickly turning somewhat brown and generally have a shorter shelf life.
You can buy them canned any time of the year but they taste NAR NARS.
The taste and texture of canned lychee is nothing in comparison to the fresh fruit.
They are like two separate species entirely divorced form one another.But even canned lychee have their charms. Forming a formidable fluid, the canned stuff and its associated liquid makes for a damn good martini (or you could use lychee syrup as suggested here).
Ive read that you can order them frozen online , but have no experience with ice-ee lychee.
Fresh lychee is so seductive a fruit that during the tang dynasty (somewhere around 700 - 900) Emperor Xuanzong had horsemen travel to the south of china, riding without rest, to retrieve fresh branches of lychee for his "precious princess consort" Yang Guifei.
Growing up without parents she eventually acquired notoriety for her beauty and helped to establish many of her relatives in public office. Having been orphaned herself, she legally adopted a general, and was eventually killed by palace guards; her family was believed to have spearheaded an insurgent group that left her suspect.
Described as a voluptuous and curvy woman Yang was a prized contrapposto to the emperors rail thin wife. Her favor was well worth the indulgence of a midnight ride for a few knuckles of succulent sweet.
I'd like to think
Beth Ditto would approve.
