ScarlettGooseberry Granita
January 17th 2008 15:08
Gooseberry Granita
About Gooseberry Granita
This delicately tart water ice, with a crystalline texture, makes an elegant dessert.
About Granita
Granita (in Italian also granite siciliana) is a semi-frozen dessert of sugar, water, and flavourings from Sicily, Italy. Related to sorbet and Italian ice, in most of Sicily it has a coarser, more crystalline texture. Food writer Jeffrey Steingarten says that “the desired texture seems to vary from city to city” on the island; on the west coast and in Palermo, it is at its chunkiest, and in the east it is nearly as smooth as sorbet. This is largely the result of different freezing techniques: the smoother types are produced in a gelato machine, while the coarser varieties are frozen with only occasional agitation, then scraped or shaved to produce separated crystals.
Common and traditional flavouring ingredients include lemon juice, mandarin oranges, coffee, almonds, mint, and when in season wild strawberries and black mulberries. Chocolate granitas have a tradition in the city of Catania and, according to Steingarten, nowhere else in Sicily. The nuances of the Sicilian ingredients are important to the flavour of the finished granite: Sicilian lemons are a less acidic, more floral variety similar to Meyer lemons, while the almonds used contain some number of bitter almonds, crucial to the signature almond flavour.
INGREDIENTS
Serves 4
450 gm / 1 lb gooseberries, topped and tailed
150 gm / 5½ oz caster sugar
200 ml / 7 fl oz Muscat dessert wine
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1. Place the gooseberries in a saucepan with the sugar and 300 ml / 10 fl oz of water.
2. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 25 minutes, or until the fruit has softened to a pulp.
3. Purée the gooseberry pulp in a food processor or with a hand-held mixer, then strain it through a fine sieve, discarding the pips.
4. Stir in the wine and lemon juice and leave it to cool.
5. Transfer the cooled mixture to a shallow, freezerproof plastic, container, cover and freeze for 1 hour.
6. Use a fork to mash into the liquid any ice crystals that have formed around the rim and base, then cover and return to the freezer for a further 4 hours, beating in any ice crystals every hour.
7. Serve the granite in glasses as soon as it is ready.
Tips:
If you want to make the mixture in advance, keep it chilled in the refrigerator until it is tie to start the freezing process at step 5.
**From “Low Fat No Fat Cookbook” and “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia” **
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