To All,
For months the Fruit Explorer has been fantasizing about going to H Mart, the Korean supermarket that is known for exotic fruits. Dreams do come true, and, prompted by Mike, I finally decided to undertake a journey and travel to Burlington. As I entered the fruit section, I immediately saw a sign for lychee nuts. I first learned about them from Mad Magazine when I was in the eighth grade and have been red hot to try them ever since. My opportunity had arrived. (The preferred spelling in the Third New International is "litchi," but I will go with H Mart's spelling. The first syllable, which is accented, can be pronounced as "lie" or "lee." It is a fruit rather than a nut, but I will follow the traditional usage.)
An Asian woman was standing at the lychee bin and furiously sorting through a huge pile of nuts (see picture), quickly examining and discarding them. The nut was roughly round, about an inch across, with a tough, pebbled exterior that looked like armor plating. I was totally unsure how to judge ripeness, so I asked her what to look for. There was such a look of baffled uncertainty on my face that she intuited that I was new to this nut; to bring me up to speed, she showed me how to peel one so that it was sitting on a little pedestal of peel and offered it to me. I took it and ate it. Meanwhile, Mike, who denounces me as a disgrace to civilization when I eat a test grape at Market Basket before buying, was watching, horrified. It turned out, however, that there was a trash can right by the lychee bin, and it was filled with discarded peels. Even Mike saw that the store had placed the trash can there and that it expected shoppers to try out the nuts. He concluded that mores are different in Korean grocery stores, and he accepted the rightness of sampling at H Mart. This is the latest proof that travel is broadening.
The woman told me that the little white patches that looked like nascent mold made no difference. I aped her method and sorted furiously through the pile, though the nuts all looked the same to me, and randomly picked out ten. On a second visit to H Mart a week later, an Indian man saw me sorting through the lychee nuts, and he volunteered advice. He said there should be some red left; avoid the ones that are all green. Avoid them if they are too soft. Pick the bigger ones. Root around in the bottom of the bin where the best nuts tend to be. He demonstrated by digging down and making the nuts fly; I now understood the technique of the Asian woman. (This Indian man was quick to offer me advice since a few minutes before he had advised me on another fruit, as you will read in the next e-mail.)
At home the big moment to experience lychees had finally arrived. I had watched the woman peel one but was unsure about how to proceed. I found that the tough look of the peel was deceptive; the touch of a thumbnail easily broke the armor plating, and it peeled right off with no problem. This left a soft, white, moist, slippery fruit, which I popped into my mouth; see picture. It was very sweet and had an unusual but pleasing taste. There was a pit in the center that needed to be spit out; see picture. I quickly made my way through all ten and would have eaten more if available. (The pits in my nuts were much smaller than the ones pictured. Also, my nuts were mainly brown with a bit of green rather than red like in many of the pictures.)
The verdict: If, like me, one craves sweetness, then this fruit is a winner. At about twelve cents per nut, this fruit will not break the bank.
Your party tip takes advantage of the fact that one can peel the nut without touching the meat so that there is just a little pedestal of peel that one can use as a handle; this means that one person can peel and feed a lychee nut to another in a fully hygienic way. Here's what you do. Teach all your guests the hygienic way of peeling a lychee nut. Have everyone sit around the table and blindfold everyone except your self. You start by peeling a nut and and feeding it to someone. You say nothing, so, while others probably hear the smacking noises and know that a feeding is going on, no one else knows who is being fed. You put your blindfold on, ring a bell that you have put in the center of the table, and the person who was just fed takes his/her blindfold off, peels a nut, feeds one of the blindfolded guests, puts his/her blindfold back on, rings the bell, and the cycle continues. Since the person who is fed does not take his/her blindfold off until the feeder is back in place and blindfolded, no one ever knows who is doing the feeding (except for the initial feeding). The party game continues as long as the lychee nuts last. There is an air of mystery due to the anonymity of the feeders, and each person, whenever fed, can only imagine who the feeder is. Plus, anything is fun that involves blindfolds.
See the next to last picture for an example of lychee art. If the Museum of Fine Arts can do a quilting exhibition, surely it can justify an exhibition of lychee art.
