Use guava puree for marinade and for entree and dessert sauces. Guava also makes excellent sorbet, frozen yogurt, and combines well with other fruits and vegetables for salads. The world's most romantic fruit, lychee, has been enjoyed in the Orient for over 2,000 years. In fact, the first fruit culture book, written in 1056, was about lychee. Lychee's fragrant, sweet, juicy flavor is memorable.
Fresh lychees are oval, about an inch in size, with a brittle, red peel.
Do not bite through the inedible, reddish shell. It peels easily revealing the fruit's pearly white, translucent flesh which surrounds a brown, inedible seed. Lychees grow in clusters on thirty to fifty foot trees which are sensitive to drought, frost, and wind. Lychee nuts are dried lychee and resemble a raisin. The dried fruit has a smoky taste and is crunchy.