I Scream. You Scream. We all Scream for Granitas!
Rosie’s Margranita
It’s summertime and the livin’ is hot. What better way to cool down and re-energize than by consuming that
wonderfully refreshing Sicilian thirst-quencher – the intensely flavored ice known as granita. Back in the Middle Ages, the Sicilian colonizers – Romans, Greeks, Spanish, and Arabs – used to harvest the snow of Mount Etna and pack it into stone grottoes along the slopes. The nevaroli, or snow-gatherers, would retrieve their chilly treasures from the slopes during the sizzling summer months and haul the blocks of snow to the city to concoct their half-frozen crystalline mixtures of water and sugar, flavored with rose petals or jasmine, cocoa or coffee, wine or sweetened fruit essences, including their wonderful Sicilian lemons.
Peach Granita
A granita is typically a dessert item or a mid-course palate cleanser (although it can certainly be enjoyed on its own) made with sugar syrup and fresh fruit juice. The liquid is frozen in a shallow pan and raked with the tines of a fork every half-hour or so to break up the forming crystals, resulting in a fluff of tiny prickles of flavored ice. The texture of a granita can vary, as it does throughout Sicily itself. It’s not an ice cream or a smoothie, which are smooth-textured and creamy; and it’s not a sorbet, which goes into an ice cream machine, and becomes a more compact and smoothly textured product and melts pleasingly on the tongue. The texture of a granita is somewhere between that of a sorbet and a sno-cone. It’s flaky and that makes it unique. The ice has the fleeting, and slightly alarming feel, of little shards landing on one’s tongue and then spreading into refreshment.
While a classic Italian granita needs to be made by hand to achieve those flakes of ice, no special equipment is needed. All you need is a fork to go from granular to flaky consistency. Every granita starts out with a simple syrup, which is a mixture of water and sugar in differing proportions, usually around one part sugar to two parts water. The sugar and water mixture is brought to a boil and then simmered until the sugar dissolves. Fruit purée and/or fruit juices are added to the simple syrup and the mixture is poured into a shallow pan and placed in the freezer. Every 30 minutes for several hours, the mixture is raked with a fork, the outside scraped towards the center.
Pineapple Granita
The sugar content of fruits varies, so the simple syrup ratio is adjusted, depending on what fruit you’re using. The size of the crystals in a granita depends on the amount of sugar in the mix. The less sugar, the larger the ice crystals. Too much sugar and you get slush. You can make a large batch of simple syrup and store in the refrigerator, covered, for up to a month. Now, you’re able to make different fruity ices throughout the coming weeks. The plus here is your simple syrup will already be cold so your granita will freeze a lot quicker. Once you’ve learned the basic technique, you’re open to a world of icy fruit and flavor combinations.
Granitas are best enjoyed at their peak of perfection – after three to four hours with intermittent raking. The following serving sizes are for small palate cleansers to be sampled in between courses. If you have any leftover the next day, which rarely happens, set the dish out, let it thaw a bit, and rake again with a fork.
Granita Recipes
Strawberry, Kiwi & Basil Granita
Make Your Own Granita Flavors
Once you have the basics down, there’s no limit to the concoctions you can create. Start out with a simple syrup, then think mango, pineapple, cranberry juice, watermelon, pomegranate juice, cherries, raspberries, grapes, kiwi, pear, grapefruit. Use whatever is fresh. Any of the alcohol-based drinks can be made without the alcohol, but you would need to check on the granitas sooner and rake every thirty minutes, since they will freeze quicker. As for suggested alcoholic combinations, make your favorite cocktail into its granita cousin.
Here are a few examples:
- Mint julep with a mint-infused simple syrup and whiskey
- Cosmopolitan with vodka, triple sec, lime juice, & cranberry juice
- Tequila Sunrise with orange juice, tequila, & grenadine
- Mojito with rum, club soda, lime juice, & mint
- Manhattan with bourbon, vermouth, cherry juice, & Angostura bitters
- Daiquiris with rum & lime juice or strawberry purée
- Sangrias with everything but the kitchen sink
- Mimosa with orange juice & champagne
- Mai Tai with rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, & grenadine syrup
- Screwdriver with vodka & orange juice
- Tom Collins with gin, lemon juice, club soda, maraschino cherries, & orange slices
I think you get the idea. Enjoy granitas and beat the heat this summer. ♦
Author: Rosie Hawthorne
Rosie Hawthorne is a blogger, gardener, wanderluster, and mother of three. She learned to cook by watching Julia Child every Saturday afternoon on her 11-inch black and white TV with legal pad and pen in hand. For the Hawthornes, every meal is a celebration of life.
