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Yes, It's Canned: Oriental Fruits Dish Up Flavor

Photo by JADEN HAIR

This tropical fruit salad will satisfy your sweet tooth while sparing you from a heavy, overly sweet baked dessert.

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By JADEN HAIR

Tribune correspondent

Published: January 15, 2009

Some of my favorite fruits come in cans. I'm not talking about tasteless, mushy pears, or stained-red maraschino cherries, but the Asian stuff, like lychee, longan and rambutan. These are fruits that I can rarely find fresh in the Tampa Bay markets, so it's nice to have a tinned alternative. When mixed with other tropical fruits, like mangoes, kiwi and pineapple, it becomes a super way to end an Asian-inspired meal.

Actually, you won't find many sweet desserts in my cooking repertoire because I really like to end my dinner with refreshing, light fruit instead of a heavy, overly sweet baked dessert. You'll find that true in most of Asia, too. Oh, but don't think that I don't have a sweet tooth — au contraire! My sugar rush happens twice a day: smack dab in the middle of the afternoon (nothing accompanies work procrastination better than chocolate!) and then in the tippy-toe wee hours after all is shush-quiet and I sneak a teeny bite of chocolate right before bed.

Oh, I'm getting sidetracked, aren't I? Back to fruit. Let's talk a bit about each type of canned goodness.

Lychee

Lychee (or litchi) is pronounced "lie-chee" in Cantonese and is found in all parts of Southeast Asia and southern China. And yes, you can grow lychee here in Florida, because it prefers a tropical climate. The fresh fruit has a thin, red, bumpy skin, and the good-quality lychee is sweet with a small seed. The canned versions are packaged in sugary water that I always reserve; it makes excellent juice for lychee martinis or to add to champagne (ah …but that's for another column). Lychee has a delicate, floral taste, similar to the texture of peeled grapes.

Longan

The name in Chinese means "dragon's eye," and is my personal favorite of the bunch. I love the firmer texture and honey-like flavor. Fresh longans are smaller than lychees, and have a brown, leathery skin that easily peels off. My mom also uses dried longan in savory soups, because it has many health properties. When my brother, Jay, and I were kids, we used to pop a longan on each of our fingers and chase each other around the house.

Rambutan

This Southeast Asian fruit is my kids' favorite, not because of the sweet fruit itself, but for the skin. When I can find rambutans fresh, the skin is like a soft, hairy, ticklish ball. In fact, part of the name rambutan means "hairy" to the people of Malaysia. The canned version tastes similar to longan, but is more oval in shape. Sometimes you'll see rambutan stuffed with pineapple bits, which is what I like.

To make a tropical fruit salad, try combining any of these canned fruits with whatever fresh fruit your market has.

TROPICAL FRUIT SALAD

To make the pineapple ring, lop the green, spiny head off of the pineapple and the bottom stem off. Cut the pineapple into 3 to 4 pieces. For each piece, use a small paring knife to run all along the inside edge of the pineapple. Push out the flesh to use in your salad (you'll have to also cut the fruit off the tough, center core before adding to the salad). Place the ring on the plate and fill with fruit salad.

1 can rambutan, drained

1 can lychee, syrup reserved

1 can longan, drained

1/2 fresh pineapple, cut into chunks

1 mango, cut into chunks

2 kiwi fruits, cut into small chunks

1 pint strawberries

Juice of 1/2 lime

Fresh mint leaves, julienned (optional)

In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients and toss. You can add the reserved lychee syrup to the fruit bowl — it's more of a sweet water, not like a sticky syrup. In fact, any of the syrups from the longan, lychee or rambutan can be used and mixed into other fruit juices or in place of simple syrup in mixed drinks. Try it mixed with sparkling water!

Serves 6 to 8.

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