Lemon Granita

I do not like doing things in person here. I miss being able to pick up the phone and arrange things. But here most things benefit face to face. When the person you need is the person you find. And that is a challenge. They are always coming back later, and later seems lost in the slow motion of life here. Everybody is trying to get someplace else and fast. What about these fast cars throughout the night? Are they successful? Do they bring any more life, any more of gusto that melts under the brutal mid day sun?

F. drives 80 in a 50 km zone, as does everyone else.. Andiamo uscire, means, "lets get dressed up and get in the Citroen with the radio loud and drive through the same towns over and over and over again." Crazy. I just accept it. I like the speed. I need it.

Tonight I think more than ever, I understand the fantasy we are sharing. I am the woman who understands him more than any has ever in his life , his real Siciliana . If being happy restores me to my Sicilian roots, then perhaps he is right.

More for his sake than for mine, I hope F. does get out of Sicily. Life here is stifling. Trying to get anything done with the least regard for order, professionalism, accuracy, or wholeness is like asking a cow to dance.

Leaving Sicily would be heartbreaking. She is dramatic, bizarre, unusual, her people decorated with a kind of Riviera flashy 70's aesthetic. We are all in our skin, in this heat who can avoid a sultry awareness, a brazenly sexy, intimate relationship with well designed vestiti ? Dresses and pantaloni split high to the hip welcome the warm, dexterous grope of the initiated, seeking love settling for sex, weaving romantic verse and fantasy to fill the void.

I love and hate it here.

From Mongerbino to Aspra to Bagheria, today I start at an office learning that no one is in. Don't know when they will be back. No phone, no communication on my part, struggling with Italian. How can I fix this? It's not that I can, I am going faster than everyone on days such as this, yet this is a cruel illusion. Getting anywhere fast/er is somehow a lie. Only walking is true.

Today's it simply can't be done any faster. it can't be done. Period.

Hot so hot. Granita. Lemon Granita, sour, sweet, cool, enlightenment for my throat, my belly, my perspiring, sun beaten face. My walk towards Bagheria is possible with the Granita. I find a phone on the road between Aspra and Bagheria. I need something, lemon and icy. A lemon ice pop from the gas station will have to do. I call Jenny - she is fast as I, and strangely hungry as I for all this confusion and frustration. I am home again. My call is interrupted by the suspicious stare of an old Sicilian woman and I head into Bagheria where I find another phone, dial my million digit phone card code and continue to speak in English for the first time in weeks. What a relief. Not only does Jenny understand me, but for a moment I am familiar to myself.


Lemon Granita

Ingredients:
6 lemons, large
1 c. sugar
1 1/3 c. water

makes 2-4 servings
depends how hot you are!

Making the Granita:
1. Wash the lemons well. If not organic, soak them in water with a tablespoon of bleach for 5 minutes. Rinse. Dry the lemons and zest them, being careful not to cut into the white of the rind. Roughly chop the zest.
2. Place zest in a saucepan with the sugar and water and heat until it simmers.
3. Strain the mixture into a shallow pan, such as a rectangular cake pan.
4. Let it cool to room temperature.
5. In the meantime, roll the lemons on a hard, flat surface to soften the lemons, making them easier to juice. Juice all three lemons into the sugar syrup, being careful to not letting the pits fall in. I use a small tea strainer and squeeze lemons over this. I love the pulp, so sometimes I let that enter the syrup.
5. Stir the mixture well. Cover the pan with saran wrap or aluminum foil (mostly to keep out any odors from the freezer. Freeze, if possible, set the temperature low.
6. As it freezes, take a fork (if the pan is not Teflon coated or a stiff rubber spatula ) and scrape the ice to break it up, loosening any ice film that forms and crushing any lumps. Repeat every 20 minutes or so - more often once it's almost frozen. It should seem more like mixed up crystals rather than slush, this will happen soon enough after serving.
7. Serve it when it's slightly slushy, and mostly broken up, small crystals.*

*If you ate Italian Ices out of a cup when you were a kid (not from the machine) it should have the texture of the bottom ice, that 1/2" which kind of was crystalized and as you ate your way down, it got softer, and was still kind of crackly, but not impervious to your spoon. That's the texture.



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