L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano W alk into a S i c i l i a n b a r o n a J u l y morning, and you will find people hav- ing, for breakfast, what the rest of Italy might file under dessert: a tall glass of grani- ta and a soft, round brioche finished with a little knot of dough on top. This is grani- ta e brioche, the island's summer breakfast; and to a Sicilian, it is the most sensi- ble thing in the world, the coolest possible way to meet a morning that is going to turn ferocious by ten. There is a right way to go about it, and everyone knows it: you take the brioche, or brioscia, in dialect, twist off that golden topknot first, the tuppo, and dip it into the ice. Then you carry on, soft warm bread and cold g r a n i t a i n t u r n . E a t t h e granita on its own, and you have a treat; eat it like this, a n d y o u h a v e a S i c i l i a n morning. B u t w h a t i s g r a n i t a , exactly? It is not a sorbet, b e c a u s e s o r b e t s c a n h i d e wine or liqueur or a little egg w h i t e , a n d g r a n i t a n e v e r does: nor is it the Roman grattachecca, which is only shaved ice under a slick of syrup. It is water, sugar, and f r u i t , f r o z e n s l o w l y a n d stirred without pause so the crystals stay fine and the whole thing turns soft, very nearly creamy, on the spoon. The first flavor, centuries ago, was lemon, then came almond, mulberry, and jasmine. These days, the most popular are probably coffee and Bronte pistachios. The story behind all this is, as so often in Sicily, partly Arab, as the taste for iced sweets in Italy traces to the sharbat, a chilled thing of fruit and flower water the Arabs brought in the ninth century, and to a trade that sounds almost mythical now, that of the n i v a r o l i , the snow men. All winter, they would climb Etna and the Nebrodi to gather snow; they buried it in stone pits called neviere, under ash and ferns and straw; and through the s u m m e r , t h e y c a r r i e d i t down to coastal towns. In medieval cities, snow was a luxury, a mark of rank on one's table, but there it was, scraped and dressed with fruit syrup into something t h e y c a l l e d r a t t a t a , "scraped." In the convents, meanwhile, the monks were turning the same snow into fragrant little sorbets fla- vored with rose, mint, and lavender, half dessert and half medicine, and pressing them on pilgrims and the odd passing lord. But the real cleverness came later, around the six- teenth century, when some- o n e r e a l i z e d t h a t s n o w packed with sea salt around a spinning zinc pail would freeze whatever sat inside, a n d s o t h e s n o w s t o p p e d b e i n g t h e d e s s e r t a n d became, instead, the cold that made it. But to have a r e a l g r a n i t a - m a k i n g machine we'd still have to wait, as the granitore was patented only in 1961 by a Neapolitan engineer named Salvatore Cortese. Even n o w , h o w e v e r , i n a g o o d many village bars, they go on turning the granita out by hand. As for the brioche and its little knot, the tuppo bor- rows its name from the old word for a woman's bun, t h e l o w c h i g n o n S i c i l i a n w o m e n o n c e w o r e a t t h e nape, a word that came, they say, from the French toupet. Soft, faintly sweet, French in its bones but wholly Sicilian by now, the brioscia con il tuppo even has its own ori- gin legend, which tells us how a Catania baker, struck by the elegant bun of a girl he passed in the street, fell i n l o v e a n d r a n h o m e t o s h a p e h i s l o n g i n g i n t o d o u g h . T r u e o r n o t , w h o would want it any other way, you may say, but the truth is that, until about a century ago, granita came with plain bread, not a brioche! Naturally, every city in Sicily has a different type of granita; in Messina, it is usually made with coffee, i t r u n s s w e e t e r , c o m e s c r o w n e d w i t h a c l o u d o f fresh whipped cream, and is eaten with a little wooden spoon. The city even trade- m a r k e d i t s g r a n i t a a mano, handmade grani- ta. In Catania, it's all about t r a d i t i o n a l f l a v o r s , f r o m almond to pistachio, all the way to mulberry and lemon, and no cream. Of course, the t w o c i t i e s w i l l c h e e r f u l l y argue their point until the granita melts. B u t g r a n i t a d o e s n ' t b e l o n g o n l y t o t h e m : A c i r e a l e , f o r i n s t a n c e , throws an entire festival, the N i v a r a t a , t o h o n o r t h e nivaroli, and the delicious iced desserts which, once upon a time, they allowed to prepare. Ragusa and Sira- c u s a b i c k e r o v e r t h e a l m o n d , w h i l e T r a p a n i scents its ice with jasmine and calls it scursunera; even Calabria, just across the strait, keeps a cousin of its own made with snow and honey, the scirubetta. And when the morning is truly for indulgence, that same brioche is split and packed w i t h g e l a t o i n s t e a d : t h e Sicilian ice-cream sandwich, and not a word of apology! Perhaps what we like the most about granita sicil- i a n a , t h o u g h , i s t h a t i t belongs a bit to us all, too: the lemon ice sold from a cart in Brooklyn or Boston, the little paper cup of Italian ice on a scorching afternoon, the scoop of gelato pressed into a soft bun at the festa, every bit of it is the grand- child of that scraped Sicilian snow, carried west in the memory of people who could not bear to leave it behind. Few things travel as faithful- ly as a way of beating the heat. So the next time a day turns unbearable, do as the island does: something cold, a little sweet, and a piece of soft bread to carry it. You will understand Sicily a good deal better by lunchtime! GIULIA FRANCESCHINI Granita, brioche, and a cold spoonful of Sicilian history A traditional Sicilian granita served with brioche, the island's classic summer breakfast and one of Sicily's most beloved culinary traditions (Photo: © Sverni / Dreamstime) LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES

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