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.

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.

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.

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.