MORE PLEASE - FROZEN PUDS

Strawberry Granita, Melon Granita, and a Toasted Almond Semifreddo with Chocolate Sauce

Post first trimester, I have only really been having one intense craving, and it is for frozen sweet things. It started quite specific, with the Mango and Passionfruit flavour Little Moons being the only pudding I wanted. But it has evolved and thankfully as the thermometer crept up over the last few months, so has my ability to put away vast quantities of ice cream. After a trip to the theatre a few months back I become fixated on the sort of shitty yet excellent chocolate ice cream that you can buy from a surly teenage usher. Next was a hard Mars Ice cream phase which, to be honest I am still very much in. Then (and I promise this is the last time I will mention it for a while) while on our trip to Sicily I remembered there was a whole world of opportunity out there in frozen form - Granita.

I said at the time that it felt like granita culture was invented for pregnant people. A cup full of intensely flavoured icy, sugary delight, sometimes topped with cream and served, if you like, with warm, pillowy brioche. It’s utter heaven, accepted as a legitimate breakfast food and so easy to make too. And, sans creamy topping, it is also a sensational plant based pudding option, by the way.

So, in honour of my need for intravenous frozen desserts, that is our theme for today. I decided to keep things simple and classic on the granita front. You may have heard already but the strawberry crop this year in the UK is particularly good and sweet. So, Strawberry Granita it is, with plenty of floofy whipped cream on top. A combination of roasted and raw strawberries is key here - the roasted for sweetness and intense aroma, the raw for a little acidity and floral notes.

One of my many other addictions, as mentioned in last weeks post , is good melon. Melon granita is one of the most refreshing things you can put in your gullet and is probably one of the more simpler ones to make, given that the melon needs to be kept raw for optimum flavour. It’s also exceptional combined with the strawberry, or perhaps with lime or lemon (my lemon granita recipe here). If I was drinking, I would be exceedingly tempted to use melon granita in a melon margarita, but I will leave that to you guys to figure out.

Not in the granita category but no less delicious is my version of a pudding we ate in Palermo. The Toasted Almond Semifreddo with chocolate sauce at Corona Trattoria truly blew my mind - it was soft and light and, noticeably, the nuts were extremely deeply toasted. One thing it is easy to forget when making frozen puddings is that a lot of flavour drops out once frozen. This is because molecules move slower when they are cold, meaning they take longer to reach your taste receptors, and even more so your olfactory (smell) receptors. Smell is particularly important when tasting, so when making frozen desserts it is often necessary to amplify the aromas in your dish. You may have noticed sometimes that ice cream or sorbet recipes taste very sweet before freezing, but well balanced once frozen. That’s because we put extra sugar in to make sure it comes across in the frozen product. All this to say - for a toasted nut flavour to come through in freezing, it is good practice to perhaps over-toast (not burn, importantly) to ensure it is detectable, and that’s what we have done in this recipe. If you like geeky food facts like this, then you should listen to the podcast I cohost, Lunchbox Envy.

STRAWBERRY GRANITA