Lychee and Persimmon Fruit Salad

Today I was supposed to tell you about allies of MI2014, so meet another one. This one’s so sweet that even your kitten (if you have one) can’t compete 😉 Anyway. Fruit salad. About as primitive and simple as it gets, though I reckon that even with all that sugar it’s just the thing for supper.

And just like “Black Tiger”, it brings back memories of China (well, a tiger’s a tiger, prawns make me think of China, and then there’s Jet Li, a bit of a tiger himself. BTW, I saw him in a great Chinese film on a bus in China in 2000, so I can safely say I knew Jet Li before anyone else did 😉 And of course tigers live in China, so I reckon the association makes perfect sense). Why China? Because of the lychees.

And here’s what I wanted to tell you about lychees. A bit like the Jet Li thing. I ate lychees before I knew they were lychees. Now that takes some doing, eh? Here’s how it happened. Before my trip to China in 2004 I didn’t know what a lychee was (a bit embarrassing, maybe, but I’d never eaten one. I might have recognised the smell, but as for knowing what one looked like, no chance). A friend and I spent just under 3 months doing my second loop around China (this time taking in Kunming, Guangzhou and even Hong Kong), and we decided to visit the little town of Yangshuo, nowhere near as popular then as it is now.

In Guilin, the main place on our must-see list in that part of China, we decided to put our luggage in left luggage, pack just our overnight things in little backpacks and head for Yangshuo, seventy kilometres away. The guidebook described a small town in a lovely setting among limestone pinnacles, worth visiting for the atmosphere. Quite unlike anywhere else in China. For one night.

We didn’t stay one night. We stayed 5 days. When you travel independently, pretty much the only STOP sign is your budget. China was exceptionally cheap in 2004. A hostel bed in Yangshuo cost us about 8 złoty. So we could decide as we went whether to stay somewhere for a night or a week (which doesn’t mean we travelled entirely without a plan. We’d sketched out our loop, going by the places in the Lonely Planet guide).

Yangshuo turned out to be our little paradise, a place to take a break (we were about halfway through our trip) from the din of Chinese cities whose sheer size could be overwhelming. And the crowds! “It’s a small Chinese town, that’s why hardly anyone speaks English here,” we were told in Taiyuan. A mere 1.2 million inhabitants. The atmosphere really was different from anywhere we’d been so far. It felt like a holiday. The centre of the little town was closed to cars, and there were cheap little places serving good food everywhere. Just perfect. And then there was the Li River winding between the limestone pinnacles. Incredible views. Just look for yourselves.

Ah yes, the lychees. OK. We stayed 5 days, and although we spent most of the time happily hanging out in bars (we arm-wrestled a Chinese guy and even won the hand of his lovely girlfriend, which, chauvinists that we were, we traded for a “bucket” of Chinese beer), eating (frog on a stick, for instance) and drinking, we also decided to take a day trip by bike.

We hired mountain bikes (the one and only time I rode a mountain bike through Chinese villages. In the cities we usually hired those classic, clapped-out Chinese city bikes) and set off through the villages and fields. So what if we got caught in a tropical downpour? It was out of this world. At last we met Chinese people who wanted nothing in return (wow, until then we’d always felt they saw dollar signs when they looked at us). Now that we were soaked through, a Chinese family took us into their home and even offered us rice, though you could see they didn’t have much themselves. Once we’d waited out the rain and set off again, we came across a strange tree just above the bank of the Li River, which was steep at that point. And on the tree, stranger fruit still. As luck would have it, we could just reach up and pick some by standing on a bike. Out of plain curiosity, and because we thought we’d seen them on sale in the streets somewhere (so we’d most likely live to tell the tale), we tried them.

I love the smell when you crack open a lychee. And there I was eating one straight off the tree. It wasn’t quite ripe yet, so it wasn’t all that sweet, but later, when we bought them from street stalls too, I really fell for that flavour. It’s one of a kind. Quite unlike anything else. Well worth trying.

These days lychees are easy to buy in Poland, so I recommend them, even for a salad as simple as this one. A good ally indeed. Bruce Lychee & Black Tiger.

At a glance: 

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Serves: one with these quantities, but you can always make more

How many calories? It’s healthy, why ask?

Ingredients for a sweet fruit salad:

• 10 lychees
• 1 medium, slightly tart apple (sadly, I don’t know my apple varieties)
• 2 fairly small kaki fruit (also known as persimmons)
• 1 mandarin
• a scant tablespoon of wildflower honey

Method (more peeling):

As I said, it’s dead simple. I peeled the apple, cut it into small pieces and tipped them into a bowl. I peeled the persimmon (took off the skin and cut out the tough bits inside) and cut it into pieces just as small. Into the bowl they went. The mandarin, as you’ve probably guessed, I peeled and then what? Cut it up. The lychees take the most work. You need to peel them without squeezing all the juice out (the shells are brittle) and get the stone out of the middle too. I added the pieces of lychee to the bowl with the other fruit. A scant tablespoon of honey drizzled over the top and it was ready. Very sweet, but very good. Enjoy!