An Italian dessert, granita is flavoured ice crystals that ease the heat on a hot sultry summer day. It is a semi frozen dessert made of sugar, water and various flavours. However, sherbet and granita are not the same.
Kolkata: If the scorching heat is taking a toll on you, try out some granita, the Italian dessert that’s slowly gaining popularity even in India. Wondering how to make one, we have your back.
What is granita?
An Italian dessert, granita is flavoured ice crystals that ease the heat on a hot sultry summer day. It is a semi frozen dessert made of sugar, water and various flavours. However, sherbet and granita are not the same.
Ingredients being more or less the same, the main difference between the two lies in the freezing method, the amount of sugar to be used in proportion to the liquid and texture of the finished product. While sherbet is prepared with a relatively higher proportion of sugar and frozen in the conventional ice maker, granita on the other hand has less sugar to the liquid, frozen in a larger freezer safe pan in the refrigerator.
However, the main focus lies in the fact that granita has to be stirred with a rubber spatula or raked with the tines of a fork every 30 minutes to get large and coarse ice crystals. Across Sicily, the locals and visitors enjoy granita not only at breakfast but throughout the day along with a meal or as a mid-afternoon snack.
History of granita
The origin of granita dates back to the 16th century when the Sicilians started adding sea salt to snow and refrigerating it with the help of a pozzetto. A pozzetto, functioning like a modern thermos, was a wooden vat with a zinc bucket inside. A mixture of water, fruit juice and honey or sugar would be placed in the zinc bucket and the blend of snow and salt used to be put between the two containers which would help freezing the mixture in the bucket.
With time, a new idea of adding manually-operated blades into the bucket popped in their minds to keep the frozen mixture in constant motion. This prevented the formation of large ice crystals and thus led to the origin of the uniquely texture of granita.
A granita recipe for you
To make granita out of an 800 gm cucumber, the supplementary ingredients required along with it are:
- 1 tablespoon grated lime rinds
- ½ cup of fresh lime juice
- ¾ cup sugar
- 1 cup water
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 3 mint springs for garnishing
Combine all the ingredients, except the cucumber and mint, and put them a saucepan. Keep the saucepan under medium heat and slowly bring the content to a boil. Then put the juice mixture and the cucumber pieces into a blender and process until it has a smooth texture. Once cooled, pour it into a baking dish, cover and freeze for 45 minutes.
However, the mixture has to be scraped with a fork from at intervals of 45 minutes for about three hours and refrozen until it becomes fluffy. Once done, garnish the granita with some
Add ons for you
Similarly, watermelon granita can also made during summer with some cardamom syrup and strawberry granita with a splash of champagne to make it a little alcoholic. The most classic among all types is the lime granita which is simply made with lemons, sugar and water.
Shristi works as a project coordinator but is a passionate author. She wields her pen on issues around public health, lifestyle and environment. A traveller too, Shristi can paint pictures with her words when it comes to travelogues.