The origins of granita date back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia, where servants were dispatched to travel long distances to fetch snow and ice for cooling royal drinks. Eventually the Romans brought the practice to Sicily. During the warmer months, Sicilians would buy snow from Mount Etna and the Nebrodi mountains from the nevaroli, men who collected it in winter and stored it in caves on the mountain to prevent it from melting. Packaged in jute bags and covered with straw, the snow was transported down the mountain aboard carts or mules, ready to cool thirsty town-dwellers. With the Arab conquest of Sicily, sugarcane and lemons were introduced to the island, and the locals began mixing in honey, as well as aromatic herbs and spices, together with the snow, creating sherbet.
In the 16th century, Sicilians came up with an early version of a ice cream maker for making frozen treats, called a pozzetto. A pozzetto was a wooden vat with a zinc bucket inside; water, fruit juice and honey or sugar would be placed in the zinc bucket, while a blend of snow and sea salt would go into the space between the two containers to freeze the mixture the bucket. Eventually, manually operated blades were added to the bucket to keep the frozen mixture constantly moving, to prevent large ice crystals from forming, and providing the perfect texture for a granita.
Today granita in Sicily comes in a wide variety of flavors and each region has its own specialty. There are so many ways to enjoy a cold granita, so I’ve selected two recipes to share with you which really demonstrate how diverse a dish this is.
One of the most widespread traditions across Sicily is to enjoy your granita with a brioche or brioscia, a sweet yeast pastry topped with a ball called a tuppo, calling to mind the traditional low bun hairstyle that Sicilian women used to wear. Once only served at breakfast, nowadays granita and brioche are enjoyed at any time of day. The granita is amazingly simple; you don’t need to use any special equipment. I left the heavy lifting of a great brioche/croissant to the expert bakers at a favorite pastry shop.
Caffe di Granita
Serves 6
2.5 ounces (1/3 cup) superfine sugar
1 cup and 2 tablespoons water
3 cups extra strong coffee
1 cup whipping cream, whipped
Heat the sugar with the water in a pan over a low heat, stirring occasionally until dissolved. Add the coffee, stir and set aside until completely cooled.
Pour the mixture into a freezer-proof container and place in the freezer for 2 hours or just over, stirring every 20 minutes to give it a granular texture. Serve in dishes or glasses and decorate with whipped cream. If it freezes solid, you can just scrape it with the tines of a fork to create the preferred granular texture.
And now for something completely different. Researching recipes for our Newburyport Wine Club for this month’s food pairing – Oysters and Wine – I came across this wonderfully refreshing way to enjoy freshly shucked oysters. Enjoy with a Etna Bianco white blend from Sicily. The wines from Etna are garnering more and more international attention, the Etna Bianco are blends of several indigenous grapes from Sicily, including Carricante, Catarratto, Grecanico, Inzolia and Minnella.
