13 lychee recipes

Exotic fresh lychee sorbet with raspberry coulis. Sweet floral lychee gets a bright orange juice boost, then freezes silky-smooth in your ice cream maker.

Spotted chocolate cheesecake with lychee sauce features cream cheese and mascarpone filling, piped white "spots," and a fragrant lychee-lemon puree. A showstopper dessert.

Lobster smoked over black lychee tea, brown sugar, and rice, then wrapped in rice paper with ripe mango, jicama, fresh herbs, and bean thread noodles. A spicy mango-sambal dipping sauce ties it all together.

Flaky Asian pear and lychee strudel with phyllo dough, crystallized ginger, toasted coconut, walnuts, and Chinese five spice. A showstopping fusion dessert dusted with powdered sugar.

Chinese mixed fruit dessert with grass jelly cubes, lychee, and mandarin oranges. Refreshing 3-ingredient cold dessert, perfect for hot summer days.

Sweet and sour pork the proper way: marinated pork cubes battered and deep-fried crisp, then tossed in a homemade sweet-sour sauce with peppers, carrots and lychees. Crunchy, glossy and far better than takeout.

Crispy battered chicken deep-fried and tossed with bell peppers, carrots, and lychees in a homemade sweet-and-sour sauce. The real-deal Chinese restaurant version, made from scratch.

Oriental Salad with Sesame Vinaigrette Dressing recipe

Vietnamese fruits in syrup (trái cây) with orange, pineapple, and lychees in a sherry-citrus sugar syrup. A simple, elegant tropical dessert chilled to perfection.

Carved honeydew melon basket filled with fresh fruit, stem ginger, orange juice, and nutmeg. A stunning no-cook centerpiece dessert with kiwi, lychees, strawberries, and grapes.

This is a typical restaurant style curry. The basic curry forms the base and the variations show how it can easily be adapted.

Litchi five-spice ice cream: a silky custard ice cream perfumed with Chinese five-spice and blended with sweet, floral lychees. An elegant, exotic frozen dessert that's a favorite for Chinese New Year.

*When you buy carambola, also called star fruit, look for ones that are uniformly yellow to orange and have a subtle perfume. If they are green, they aren't ripe and won't yield a great deal of flavor. At their ripest, their flavor is an unmistakably tropical combination of apple, banana and lychee.