I wish you all a happy and healthy 2017 with delicious food and wine. As my first contribution to this, I present to you homemade lychee ice cream. Lychees are a tropical fruit with a complex delicious aroma and flavor. When turned into ice cream, they become a very special treat. It is a bit of work to peel them and remove the seeds to produce the fresh lychee juice needed to make this recipe, but believe me, it is worth it! Most of the complex delicious aroma will be gone when you use store-bought lychee juice for this (which in most cases isn’t 100% lychee juice in the first place).
Ingredients
Makes about 750 ml (3 cups)
500 ml (2 cups) fresh lychee juice, from about 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) of lychees
250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream
100 grams (1/2 cup) caster sugar
4 egg yolks
Instructions
Combine 4 eggs with 100 grams of fine sugar in a bowl.
Whisk until pale and creamy. The color change can be clearly seen in the photo, and requires less than a minute of whisking.
Add 250 ml of cream.
Transfer this mixture to a saucepan and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, to a temperature of 85C/185F. Then turn off the heat. You have now made a custard that would be called crème anglaise if you also included vanilla. This step doesn’t only cook the egg yolks so you don’t have to worry about salmonella, but it also binds the sugar with the cream for a better texture of the ice cream.
Allow the custard to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate to cool fully.
Time to make lychee juice. Cut around each lychee with a paring knife, through the skin until you get to the pit.
Remove the skin.
Remove the seed.
Repeat until you have peeled all of the lychees. You will still see some brown skin that was around where the seed used to be, but we will eliminate that in the next step.
Put the lychees in a blender…
…and blend until smooth.
Use a sieve or even better a food mill fitted with a fine sieve…
…to remove all of the solids from the juice.
Now add the juice to the custard, and allow to cool together.
Churn the lychee juice and custard mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions to obtain lychee ice cream.
You can now serve at once, or transfer the ice cream to a plastic container and freeze it. Allow the ice cream to ‘warm up’ to about -10C/14F before serving by moving it from the freezer to the refrigerator about half an hour before.
Wine pairing
Gewurztraminer is famous for having aromas of lychees, so a sweet wine made from this grape variety is a great choice that will work very well as long as it is indeed very sweet. Dry wines from gewurztraminer may seem sweet, but they only smell sweet and are in fact dry. They would be terrible with this ice cream. So look for late harvest, vendanges tardives or passito, like this Pasithea Oro from Girlan in Alto Adige, Italy. It was outstanding together with the ice cream, because not only the aromas but also the acidity worked very well with the natural acidity of the lychees.
Flashback
Ravioli with shrimp, coconut and green curry is a pretty crazy Thai-Italian fusion dish, but it sure is delicious!
Stefan's Gourmet Blog 
I have never in my life seen a lychee. Are they native to where you live?
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They are imported from Madagascar, Israel, or Asia. The Netherlands is not a tropical place 🙂
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Love lychees! And so easy to find here. Not sure I will have the patience to peel a kilo of them but the ice-cream looks delicious. Buon anno Stefan!
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Never heard of Lychee’s before, now I’m on the hunt to try some! Thanks for the cool recipe, can’t wait to try!
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Lovely post indeed Stefan. The humble Lychee is a delicious fruit. I really love the wine selection. I didn’t know there was a sweet Gewurztraminer. Another wine to try. As an aside, Lucy brought a red ice wine back from a trip to Canada. I am looking forward to trying it.
Happy New Year,
Conor
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I love lychees but have never tasted them in ice cream form….sounds delicious😊
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Probably my favourite fruit available all around the Pacific . . . love taking a cut bunch of stalks with the fruit hanging berrylike on them to give as a gift instead of the usual roses. But don’t think I would ever have the patience to do this much work . . . 🙂 ! Best again for the New Year now that it a whole three days old 🙂 !!
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Oh I love lychees, but would never have thought of ice cream! This sounds intriguing and delicious. Happy New Year!
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hmmm I live Lychees I’ll have to see if I can make this, thank you great one!
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Mai avrei pensato di fare un gelato con i lychees – ora mi accorgo anche che non avrei saputo scrivere il nome correttamente …Dev’essere molto buono! Ancora buon anno Stefan!
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Fantastico. Mi piace molto questo frutto e il gelato deve essere buonissimo
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Fantastic Stefan. I love liches and I wonder if I can make this recipe. The best way to taste is to organize a trip to Holland. I wish you a nice 2017 full of food and travels 🙂
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If lychees are available when you’re here, I’ll make it for you 🙂
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It would be a dream for two reasons. Coming in Holland and having a nice day in your world. Ciaooo
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You continue to educate me in just about every post, Stefan. I’ve never tried a lychee nut and certainly haven’t ever made lychee juice. I don’t know whether I’ll ever make this but, I can say, that my next trip to Chinatown won’t end until I’m served lychee in one form or another. More than one if the Dim Sum restaurant has them on the menu. 🙂
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