Lychee Fruit

I love Lychee but I also realize unless you grew up eating these little beauties they can be rather intimidating. No worries, they are easy to bust into and the white flesh is lightly fragrant, sweet and juicy.

Just poke into the top (stem end) with a paring knife or even your nail and start peeling. If you have a stash to get through, making a cross mark with a sharp knife (like you would a chestnut before roasting) is the easiest way to penetrate the thin outer shell.

The reward is a white opaque flesh surrounding a pit (which comes in two possible sizes), sweet, juicy and lightly fragranced. I pop the entire thing into my mouth and nibble around the pit. Admittedly, this technique would not work for small kids or if you are preparing it for company. You can score the flesh around the equator and pull each half away from each other to create to half orbs. They might not look pretty once dissected but still as delicious.

The pitts look like roasted coffee beans or big chocolate nuggets and this is an example of type one.

Type two is at the very bottom of the image above and is called Tongue Pitt, not sure what the difference is but it had nearly twice as much flesh around it (less pitt more flesh, makes sense) and I don't recall seeing any visible difference on the outside to be able to tell which would contain which inside. I love sharing my favorites and as I saw these appear at my local market this week could not resist a few treats for myself. What produce do you enjoy that you think others might not be exposed to yet?

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