I came up with this recipe when it was 30 degrees everyday. It was just really hot and unbearable everyday. Eating this is like an escape; a brief minute of icy, summery bliss. The recipe is really simple, and you can use whatever herbs you’d like. Honestly there’s also minimal prep because my hot, gross self would not want to be washing a bunch of tiny bowls. Although simple, the dessert does need a lot of babysitting.
Recipe:
- 200g sugar
- 300ml water but you can use as little as 200ml water if you like a super sweet dessert
- herbs of choice but obviously mint and shiso here. I used about 80g of herbs, but I just wanted it to be really strong.
- pinch of salt
- the whole juice and zest of 1 lime or 2 not-juicy limes
- a plastic bowl or container
Directions:
1. Wash and dry your herbs and lime. It doesn’t have to be super dry, just clean.
2. Get a small to medium sauce pot. Pour in the sugar, water, and salt all in there.
3. Cook the pot on low-medium heat until all the sugar is dissolved. Liquid should be kind of viscous.
4. Once all dissolved, turn the heat off, and set the sugar water off the heat.
5. Throw the herbs + zest in there. Cover the pot with a lid, and steep for 20-30 minutes. This will bring out the flavors of the herbs without the bitterness from the heat.
6. Once the sugar water has cooled off, juice that nakey lime directly into the sugar water. Give it a mix. Also give it a taste! If you want more lime or more water, this would be the time to make adjustments.
7. Strain the liquid directly into a plastic container.
8. Cover loosely with a lid of plastic wrap, and stick your plastic container in the freezer.
9. After 1-2 hours, check on your liquid. It should be a little frozen, but still very liquid. Get a fork and fork your liquid, kind of like in a motion of whipping eggs for scrambled eggs. This will feel silly and futile.
10. After another 30-60 min, get up, check on your sugar water, and give it another thorough forking. You should do that every 30 min until it gets more frozen, and then every 10-20 min. You want to crush all the ice crystals.
11. Once it reaches desired texture, or you forget about it, it should freeze overnight to be enjoyed the next day.
To enjoy:
Freeze some serving bowls. This takes a little prep brain, but if you use a room temp bowl, your granita will melt so fast that it wouldn’t have been worth the time to have made this. If your granita is more solid because you forgot about it, that’s ok. Just give it a scrapey scrape with a fork. I like this texture a lot because it’s like snow. Garnish with a little mint leaf and maybe some zest! Hope you will try it out!
Story time
My partner’s mom came by and gave us a bunch of shiso from her garden. It kind of looks like shiso, and it’s really minty and herbaceous. But maybe it’s not shiso because it does look a little different, and it’s southeast asian. It could be the same species as shiso. Well we used most of the herbs for fresh rolls, but we had a little leftover, which I used for this granita.
I don’t normally think “wow I wanna eat flavored iced”. Like I have sensitive teeth, so that doesn’t sound like a fun time. But in Yakushima, we had this really amazing ponkan shiso granita, which I still think about. It was tart, sweet, and whatever herbs they used was so good. I was thinking about that when I made this granita.
