When we were home last month, my wife and I went out for dinner one night at a seafood restaurant. No the post is not about sea food. It is about a Lychee Mojito I had for my drink. Since a very early age I have always loved the fruit lychee. Juicy, succulent with an unrivalled elegant smell. The more I think about it, I think it is the smell of lychee that makes it so appealing to me. As you may already know by now how much I am into good smells, aka fragrances!
So I enjoyed anything to do with lychee - the fruit itself (of course!), juices made out of lychee, lychee gello (something like that...not jam, but a jelly like cube) and even lychee honey!
So at dinner when I saw Lychee Mojito on the menu, there was very little doubt in my mind that I was going to get it. It was decided even before we started choosing our main course meal. This was the mojito.
It was everything I expected it to be - elegance is a glass if you may!
And ever since, I have wanted to make it at home. I have been looking at mojito recipes on repeat. I even ordered a couple of bottles of soda water. The only thing that was missing was the lychee! The ones that were in the market were just not good enough for my liking. I can tend to be a bit picky when it comes to the stuff I am passionate about.
The search continued, until earlier this afternoon while I was returning home from the Ward.
There they were, as juicy and succulent as ever! This vendor had some of the best looking lychee I have seen so far this season. I bought quite a bit as I wasn't too worried about them going bad as my wife happens to love lychee as well! Win-win if there ever was any!
I didn't wait a single day to try and replicate the lychee mojito. And I was thinking if I could perfect it, this was definitely going to be my signature drink! Such elegance!
First up - getting some mint from my balcony! I just dipped these in water about 10 days back. They look pretty healthy and ready to be transferred to soil. I m just being a lazy bum! The intensity of the mint aroma nipped freshly from the plant is incomparable and elevates the drink a few notches without any extra effort!
Here are some of the lychees by the way! All the recipes say 1 lychee per glass is enough. I went with 3 per glass because, Why Not?!
The ideal wan is to add the lychee and squeeze some lemon juice in individual glasses and then pound them to extract as much juice and flavour as possible from the lychee and mint.
But because I went so overboard with the lychee, I had to take a larger mug to give me enough "pounding space" 😂
Quite a lot of juice extracted! I dissolved some sugar in water separately and added it to the lychee extract.
Kept it in the freezer for about 30 mins to chill it before getting the final pieces together - ice cubes, loads of ice cubes and soda water! I am not sure if I managed to make it look very professional, but it actually tasted way better than the one I was trying to replicate! So provided I have good lychee at home, I'll definitely be making this more often as the summer gets hotter over the coming months!
