A Cool Coffee Experience
This weeks Food and Wine Friday post is about the glorious Granità di Caffé. Over to Judith Greenwood who will tell you how to prepare this delightful way to cool down in the heat of an Italian summer.
Summer is hot. Summer is long. Gelato is very good indeed, but not everyone can eat a gelato every time a scorching Saharan sirocco whooshes through the living room. Granita is the other choice, and granita di caffé is the adult other choice.
Granita di Caffé
Once upon a time, granita di caffé was made by pouring sweet espresso over shaved ice. Now most of them are made by pouring syrup over granulated or crushed ice. It’s not the same thing, trust me. The best response is to make it yourself, at home. Don’t run out and buy a deadly looking, two-handled ice scraper, though. There’s a much easier way.
Dig Out Your Donvier
You don’t have to have a gelato making machine. All you really need is some version of the Donvier
Mokka Some Coffee
Make strong espresso in your mokka pot or make double strength coffee in your coffee press.
Measure out the espresso into a glass measuring cup. For 250 millilitres of caffé, add twelve teaspoons, or cucchiaini, of sugar while it’s still hot. Stir it in, let it cool, and then stick it into the fridge to chill.
Fifteen minutes before you want to serve the granita, assemble the gelato-making apparatus and pour the chilled and sweetened coffee into the freezing part. Follow the directions, turning the crank every once in a while, for 12 minutes, then remove the crank, use a spoon to mix this icy treat and then to pile it into chilled skinny glasses to serve with a small spoon for scooping it up.
Add That Special Touch
Granita di caffé is served with or without whipped cream on top, or you could also drip a bit of a liqueur over it for granita di caffé coretto. It melts quickly, so if get it to table at once.
———————-
Sounds great Judith! Just the thing for the summer months, and something that could add a little more sparkle to that summer dinner party – overlooking the Med, of course – Alex
Judith Greenwood is a private chef who works out of Citta di Castello down in Umbria. She also runs a Discover la cucina italiana: Italian Cookery course, and, aside from her extensive knowledge of Italian cuisine, she can even help you find the best made to measure clothes.
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I don’t know when you revamped this … it’s summer, I’m losing my mind, but I love what you’ve done!
It looks really good.
YUM!
@ Thanks Di! Good to hear you like the ‘new clothes’!
@ Cherrye – I’ll second that! Yum YUM!
All the best to you both,
Alex
I love granita! It’s funny, when I moved from Sicily to Naples I was surprised the first time I ordered granita di caffe. What they gave me looked like what is in the photo, which is VERY different from what I was used to in Sicily. But let’s be honest, be it a miniature whipped coffee milkshake or an icy slush, it’s all good when the heat gets going. Ciao, Karen
I adore coffee granita, and shakerato the foto looks like the new version, which i just had in Amalfi called a cremoso.
somewhere between both!
@Karen – yes, I know about the different versions of coffee granita too. We get both the icy slush and the coffee milk shake thing up here in Milan. As you say though – both are great when the heat gets going!
@Diva – the granita di caffé above was from a bar near me here in Milan. Actually, this is the first year I’ve really noticed coffee granita for sale up here in north Italy.
Thanks for dropping in to both of you,
Alex
IS coffee that much more different than our coffee in the US? I mean I know that we have coffee from all over but do people generally like it a certain way over there?