Recipe: Coffee Granita

It’s been a funny old spring, hasn’t it. Very hot days interspersed with chilly ones, lots of wind bringing down lots of branches. But now it’s officially summer, with the longest day of the year just past. Vernal ponds around where I live are totally dry now, after a very wet winter and heavy early spring rains. Pretty soon the pollen will be gone, I hope — it usually is by around the Fourth — and I can power wash my screen porch and begin to live outside more. And this year it really will be more, with fans providing a breeze, given the incredible escalating cost of running an air conditioner these days.

Hot hot hot. It’s coming. And some of us are going to have to resist any impulse to lie down in front of the open refrigerator door and come up with some things to put on the table. In the course of the next few weeks I’ll give you some make-ahead summer salads — pasta, potato, and coleslaw, all really good recipes refined over time — that you can put together in the cool of the morning and pull out at the end of the day. Today, though, I’m remembering sitting in a square in Siracusa, in Sicily, and trying coffee granita for the first time. A revelation. I wish I were there now.

If you followed my earlier advice and froze various juices — blood orange, lemon, tangerine, lime, etc. — during prime citrus season, you already have the most important ingredients necessary for making most granitas. Coffee granita, though, stands alone, and is without doubt one of the most popular desserts served at my house. In Sicily, where hot times in the summertime defy description, this is often how coffee starts the day. I don’t know if, there, they start with freshly brewed espresso; it’s possible, Italy is a place where coffee plays a serious cultural role. But it’s not necessary: substituting instant espresso simplifies the workload here and, time in the freezer aside, you can put this together very easily and quickly. The reward far outweighs the effort. Make sure you offer blessings to the ground walked on by whoever invented it.

Coffee Granita
Serves six or so, keeping in mind that second helpings usually seem necessary

Fill a quart measure with boiling water.

Add eight heaping teaspoons of instant espresso, available in supermarkets — Medaglia d’Oro and Ferrara are two brands. I have both and usually use four teaspoons of each, but no matter. I use a measuring teaspoon and dip it into the jar. Heaping, as I said.

Add slightly more (a tablespoon more) than 3/4 c. of sugar. Stir to dissolve.

Add both the coffee and the sugar to the water. It defies reason, but putting them into your quart measure and adding the water results in a smaller amount of liquid than doing it the way I said. If you want to know why, you’ll have to call your high school chemistry teacher, I haven’t the faintest.

Let the mixture sit on the counter for a while, at least 20 minutes. Or longer, you can go lie down somewhere while you wait.

When cooled a bit, add:
2 tsp. vanilla
4 tsp. Kahlua
If the mix is too hot, the alcohol will evaporate, and I think the alcohol is what keeps the granita in a large grained, slushy state, even when frozen. I haven’t checked this out with my high school teacher either, but that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

You can put this into the refrigerator for a few hours to cool it further, which will make freezing it quicker, or proceed immediately to freezing.

Pour the mixture into a flat metal pan with high sides, a roasting pan, for example. Do not use a non-stick pan, it will be ruined. Clear a flat spot in your freezer and put in the pan. After an hour, and then every half-hour after that, scrape down the mixture with a large fork, putting it back into the freezer after each scrape. It will take a few hours to freeze it all, and it will look like large flakes. It stays in a servable state for a good while, so it can be made a day ahead. It’s still good after that too, if there’s any left.

Watch out when you remove the pan for the first few scrapes, it’s easy to spill. I knew from the beginning that this would be a permanent part of my life, so I bought NordicWare covered metal pans from Amazon for this. Up to you, but, again, be careful of spills in the beginning.

Serve with sweetened whipped cream. The granita is sweet enough, so I use very little sugar in the cream. It’s a good idea to use chilled bowls for serving, it melts fast. If you decide to have this for breakfast, tell your mother I said it was okay to have a little whipped cream at the beginning of the day. Life is better that way, sometimes.