Granita, which means grainy coarse ice, is a dessert from Sicily. Since my family hails form Florence and Lucca in the North, I didn't exactly grow up eating granita as a dessert. In fact we didn't eat a lot of foods from Sicily in my family . Part of the reason was a long drawn out and obscure feud that started back at the turn of the last century when a great great aunt decided to marry a Sicilian. You thought Romeo and Juliet was a mess???? What started in 1912 took me until 2001 to resolve when I got all the principals to the table again thanks to Ancestry.com.
As it turns out my half Sicilian cousins had grown up mere blocks from me and we'd lived our whole lives not knowing of each others existence. Denials of a feud from our end didn't work either when opened pieces of mail with "NO SUCH PERSON EXISTS HERE! STOP BOTHERING ME" scrawled across the envelops were produced. One memorable phrase sticks in my head.
"Don't Forget Marie, every dog will have his day!"
Okay then. The process of granita-making is straight forward and simple in the extreme, No machine is needed, this is not high tech. Remember, this is a dessert that was probably served to Caesar. Mix, freeze and stir. The only two things to remember in making your granita is to go easy on the sugar and alcohol if you're using any, as that makes it tougher to freeze the mixture because it requires lower temperatures. So with this in mind, I plunged into granita making. I never like things too sweety sweet, I like fresh and interesting, so I decided to experiment and came up with my own seat of the pants flavor.
—Kathy Gori
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