Granita

a few weeks before going to sicily i had watched one of famous youtube polyglot xiaomanyc’s videos in which he visits with paul rausch, the founder of cademia siciliana, a non-profit that promotes sicilian language advocacy projects and works to keep sicilian alive by bringing it into the technological fold. cademia siciliana is the organization that collaborated with google to bring sicilian to google translate and to google’s gboard, and has helped integrate sicilian into firefox, telegram, and meta. at some point in the video xiaoma mentions that he has noticed that people in sicily don’t really seem to eat breakfast and rausch responds that sicilian doesn’t even have a word for breakfast. apparently the closest thing they have to breakfast is granita.

granita is sort of like italian ice, but depending on where you are in sicily, it ranges in texture from a creamy sorbet to very icy, crunchy snow cone. it was invented during arab rule as sharbat: a mix of fruit blended with snow and rose water. mount etna gets heavy snow fall in the winter and has had ice houses, neviere, since ancient times allowing the wealthy of sicily have always had access to cooling therapeutic slush even during the long hot sicilian summers. when coffee arrived to sicily in the 16th century they combined the coffee with snow and sugar and mixed it in zinc lined, wood insolated bowls packed with ice and salt (like an ice cream machine). in cataina, which has been buried by enta’s lava flows and rebuilt 17 times, they are closer to the source, and the snow was of finer quality and the resulting granita was, and is to this day, very smooth and creamy. in marsala and chefalu, where i ate most of my granita, it is icier, crunchier, less creamy. for ‘breakfast’ it is paired with a warm brioche bun, (very light, very soft, very fluffy) traditionally col tuppo, or ‘with a top-knot’.

as it turns out, granita was much harder to find than i expected. on multiple occasions in sicily we found that things were offered or advertised that no one had any intention of giving us. the cultural attitude towards food and drink service is that you are having it our way or maybe not at all. after a failed morning search for granita in catania hunger over comes us so we stop for a couple of arancina (sic). its noon now and standing at the bar ordering our italian onigiri we decide to order one beer to share with what is now our lunch. we order our two arancina and one beer and the gruff women behind the bar offer in english, ’to-take-away.’ not exactly our plan so i say, ‘we can get it to-go?’ and she says, ‘si, si, of course,’ after some debate erica and i reluctantly agree, ‘sure, we’ll have it to-take-away,’ to which both women reply, ’no, no, you can’t have it take-away,’ and proceeded to give us two glass half liter glasses of draft. this sort of behavior was hinted at in the longer xiaomanyc video on sicily and happened to us repeatedly, and with granita it was no different. shops that advertised granita on the door in catania acted like i was crazy for asking for it and sent me packing to the next shop that would have ‘granita’ advertised in bold, metal letters on its fascia and would also not have granita. i finally start to figure out that in catania granita is more of a high summer thing. a few days later in marsala i finally find some real ‘breakfast’ granita and nobody on this part of the island thought i was crazy for wanting it and served paired with the brioche. as excited as i was about trying it at first, once i had it in front of me i wasn’t sure about this sweet icy slush, but after a few bites i came around: its actually a very nice, refreshing, light, caffeinating way to start your day. that said, on day two in our marsala airbnb i relished the opportunity to make us some american breakfast: good old potatoes and eggs.