New ingredients are exciting to me and while lychee may be old hat for some people, when I saw this recipe I wondered, “What’s a lychee?” I’ve found that recipes by Jaden of Steamy Kitchen are so easy and accessible that I knew this would be a good weeknight meal with the bonus of a new ingredient. You can sub in pineapple for the lychee and that was my backup plan if I could not find this mysterious ingredient. I went to one of the markets around here that has a pretty extensive Asian aisle and at the bottom of the wire shelving was a bright blue can of lychee! The bold can was beautiful and I thought to myself that if I were more creative, I could make something decorative out of it. Instead, it was sent to the recycling bin so hopefully someone else will one day make magic with it.

The recipe was easy and came together very quickly. The only tricky part was forming the meatballs because the meat mixture is very sticky, but it was worth it. Jaden provides a picture of the easiest way to form the meatballs in her post. The only thing I would change for next time is to double the ingredients for the sweet and sour sauce so we have more delicious juice to spoon over our meatballs and rice. I served the meatballs and colorful veggies over brown rice and we had enough for dinner that night and lunch the next day. Go forth and make meatballs, but the veggies in the sauce were so good that you could definitely go vegetarian on this one. The lychee is unique, tasty and tropical tasting. I may try pineapple another time, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist that bright blue can.

Before you head over to the post and have your hopes dashed, Jaden was giving away copies of her cookbook and that contest has now ended. Hopefully Santa is planning on bringing Jaden’s cookbook to our houses anyway.