Sicilian lemon granita, grandma’s recipe, as good as the one from the café using lemon juice, also perfect for a typical Sicilian breakfast together with the famous Brioches col tuppo. This is a vegan, vegetarian and gluten free dessert of incredible deliciousness; it belongs to Sicilian cuisine and grandma’s recipes and is an exceptional Sicilian dessert, just like the equally famous Gelo di limone. Our Sicilian summers as children in the ’80s–’90s were marked by loud music coming from the little three-wheeled vans set up as mobile ice-cream parlors, and when the Neapolitan melodic tunes poured from the streets into the houses, the phrase was: “sta passannu u gilataro!” Often we’d run into the street; a granita cost 1000 Lire and a brioche 500 Lire — some got it almond-flavored, some chocolate and some lemon, and they were all so good — maybe because they truly were, or maybe because the carefree age made everything seem so beautiful and tasty… Today, perhaps due to European regulations, you see fewer mobile granita vendors and we are all more doubtful about hygiene and many other things, so we rarely stop to buy a granita and a “smoky” brioche among the traffic-filled streets of Catania. Nevertheless, granita and brioche remain the musts of Sicilian summers, whether bought at a café or made at home. Yes, because granita is accessible to everyone, a “poor man’s ice cream” you can make at home, originally prepared with snow and syrups. Snow collected in winter and stored in shaded mountain crevices was brought down to towns and cities in summer and sold to make this refreshing dessert. Today, after already explaining how to prepare almond granita even without a special machine, I will explain how to make lemon granita at home without an ice cream maker. Follow me in the kitchen and you’ll see how delicious it is — but first, if you want to keep up with all my recipes, you can follow my Facebook page (here) and my Instagram profile (here).

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