The Fresh Lychee Experience
The other day I went out in search of some fruit and veg to compliment the things I had to eat in the house. I picked up a bunch of grapes and thought it was settled but before I went to pay for the grapes, I gave the stand a walk through, just make sure there wasn't anything I missed (I was having noodles, and sometimes you find random things that would be great with noodles.) And, before I got to the gigantic eggplants in the back I noticed them....Lychees. Now, I've had lychee juice boxes and lychee flavored smoothies and ice cream, but I've never had a fresh lychee. So, I picked up about six of them and went straight to the counter to pay so I could rush home and try them.
A lychee looks a like a gigantic raspberry in armor. They are red and bumpy and hard. The skin almost feels like a crust surrounding the precious fruit inside. When I picked them up, they felt like fresh fruit should feel, fruit yet soft. And, they smelled divine.
A Lychee smells how I would imagine a jungle would smell, floral and humid. Its the sort of smell that when you inhale, you can feel it on your skin. Like humidity, its almost like a pressure but its not opressive. Its tense and mysterious. Of course, I was hooked on the smell.
After I returned home from my impulse fruit shopping, I had to google the lychee because having never eaten a fresh one before, I didn't know how to eat it. I found this entry on WikiHow. It was the first return on the Google search "How do you eat lychees?" I followed the step-by-step instructions. I peeled it. It mentions eating the white/grey fruit. I found this description to be unappetizing. My mind immediately jumped to Halloween parties as a child where Mothers turned out the lights and passed around peeled grapes telling you that you were feeling a bowl full of eyeballs. Now, I understand that this description might put you off the lychee eating, but please don't be put off. The experience is nothing like those childhood parties that make you dread people saying, "Hey, feel this." The lychee is a disconcerting white-ish color but its texture is much firmer than that of a peeled grape.
Since "peeled grape" was the first thing that came to mind when reading about it, I assumed that the experience of peeling it would be similar. I was expecting sticky. It wasn't. Peeling a lychee was similar to peeling an orange, if I had tried I probably could have gotten the skin to come off in one piece. It also reminded me of shelling a peanut with the skin really acting as a protective armor around the fruit. Once you peel it and seed it, all of that milky white flesh is yours.
I say all of that as if there was a lot of flesh in each lychee, but there wasn't. They are bigger than most berries but smaller than an apple. I could probably hold two lychees in one hand and keep a good grip on them. I ate the six of them that I bought on consecutive days, two or so a day. And, the taste. Oh, the taste.
Considering that the smell had me busy constructing mental images of myself relaxing under the high canopy of a lush jungle, fanning myself in the midday heat, I couldn't wait to actually try the fresh fruit. The taste was less intense than the smell. The lychee is juicy. Its flavor was first fruity and then the floral hit. The end of the taste was intense, as if the fruit had condensed down to a floral powder, which I found surprising since the smell of it made me think of humidity. The texture of the fruit was firm with a strong fibre feel to it without being stringy. The feel of it was very self contained, like you really had to bite it because it couldn't be relied upon to fall apart in your mouth. Deliciousorganics.com describes the lychee as "sweet" and "exotic tasting". It also recommends that you eat it right as you peel it so that the fruit does not dry out. I peeled them and didn't eat them right away on the last day I had them, and I didn't find that they dried out. However, I did find that the fruit on the last day wasn't white or grey, but more the color your clothes come out when a red sock inflitrates the whites wash and the bleeds. Of the fruit, this pinkish one was the juiciest. When I bit into it, I got a huge gush of yummy, lychee flavor.
If you see lychee at your veg stand or in your supermarket, I highly recommend that you pick some up. They are tasty and excitingly exotic.
