Heretic litchi and lime sorbet
Charline, a friend of Céline’s, had planned a big party in her new flat on the 14th of February, partly to dance like crazy but also to relieve people from this indigestible tradition that is called Valentine’s Day. Charline is a connoisseur, she offered me a recipe book about ice cream (containing an interesting Calisson ice cream recipe I’d like to try one of these days…), and so the standards were quite high… And yet we did not have much time and ingredients. Therefore we opted for an easy-to-make and yet original sorbet: Litchi and lime sorbet.
I guess some people will frown when they see I’ve used canned litchis, but the Ices book said that they guaranteed a good result, and that they were actually better than fresh ones, whose tastes often differ one from the other. The other advantage is that it provides you with a litchi-flavoured sugar syrup, something you would not have with fresh ones.
Ingredients:
Two big cans of litchis.
1 lime.
1 cup sugar.
About one cup of water to fill the canister.
Add the sugar to the syrup contained in the can and heat it until the sugar is totally dissolved. Add the rind of the lime, let it simmer for a while then let it cool, and sieve it to remove the rind.
Process the litchis in a blender with the syrup and the juice of the lime. Then go cranking. Luckily we had time to put the sorbet in the freezer for 2/3 hours before going to the party, otherwise it would never have been firm enough.
People loved it, and it was eaten quickly. It was smooth, very refreshing, but the taste was quite subtle, I would even say generic. And indeed I heard some people say “You can really taste the apricotâ€, or “Mango! My favouriteâ€, which was funny and embarrassing at the same time. I guess fresh litchis may be riskier, but they should give a result closer to what you expect from a litchi.
Alleluia for Thibault and Celine, lone crusaders for the triple motion blog! Even more respect to you for making sorbet in the winter. I agree with you about the flavouring problem – from a taste point of view, sorbet is so transparent that if the flavour isn’t the absolute apogee of that fruit it just ends up tasting generic.
Yes!
When we have used lychees we made an ice cream with fresh fruits. It was subtle but pretty good I think. I hadn’t thought of taking advantage of the syrup from the tin though, which sounded like a good idea since lychees are softly flavoured. So far, the best lychee ice cream I’ve had came from Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.