Eat

A little bit of inspiration for your tastebuds…

When I went to Italy a few years back, of course I went to many a gelateria. The gelato was yummy, but for me the shining star was something called a granita. It looks sort of like a Slurpee and can be consumed in the same way, only it isn’t made of a bunch of junk. It’s basically just various juices, herbs, etc. frozen into ice and then crushed periodically over a period of time. It doesn’t sound like much, but the result is heavenly. I loved them so much that I went and found a book called Granita Magic, by Nadia Roden, which features 55 different flavors of granitas! 55! It is crazy, but it turns out there are so many more iterations than I had imagined. However, I naturally gravitated towards my favorite granita flavor, strawberry, and I have posted the recipe below.

Strawberry Granita (from Nadia Roden’s book Granita Magic)

Ingredients

1 cup water

3/4 cup sugar or to taste

1 1/2 pounds sweet ripe strawberries (about 5 heaping cupfuls)

1 cup fresh orange juice

Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

Simmer the water with the sugar for a minute in a medium saucepan. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Briefly rinse the strawberries and hull them. Blend the berries to a puree in a food processor. Mix in the sugar syrup and the orange and lemon juices. Taste and add more sugar if needed. Pour the mixture into a wide and shallow container. Cover with a lid, foil, or plastic wrap. Freeze the mixture for an hour or two until it has frozen around the edge. Take the container out of the freezer and scrape the ice with a fork, mixing it from the edge to the center. Repeat the scraping and mixing process every 1/2 hour or so (at least three times) until the entire mixture has turned into small, sequined ice flakes. It is best to eat the granita at once, but if you leave it in the freezer overnight or longer, just let it sit for 10 minutes until it softens a little and then scrap it again with a fork to lighten the texture.

So there you go! Give it a whirl, and if you like it, you can purchase
Granita Magic by Nadia Roden from Amazon for just $4.23 new!