Slush puppy heaven.

(or Cinnamon Summer II)

Growing up one of my favorite dirty pleasures was the slush, or slurpy, or slush puppy. The names changed with the convenience store, but the recipe was always the same. Crushed ice was pumped into a cup and copious amounts of sweet, florescent dyes were squirted in.  You drank this concoction until it gave you a dizzy headache, or you sucked all the syrup out of the ice. It didn’t matter that your tongue was green for the rest of the afternoon. Actually, it did matter –– it was a fringe benefit!

In Italy, they have a name for it: Granite. Anyone who has been to Italy is familiar with the machines swirling the already mixed ice and mystery liquid that are in every bar or gelato joint around the main tourist attractions. The flavors are often better than the convenience store variety of my youth, but not enough to take your mind off the fact that they are just slightly more liquid snow cones. 

Only a traveler to Sicily, where they claim to have invented granita, will understand just how satisfying flavored ice can be. Although, it is possible to find standard, tourist-trap granite – those candy shop machines are everywhere–– I have yet to find a more sublime granita anywhere else in Italy.   One of the best is at the Bar del Porto at the, well, at the bar at the port on the small island of Panarea in the Aeolian archipelago just north of Sicily.  Here the granite is dished out of stainless-steel ice cream containers, like those at Giolitti in Rome or other historic Italian ice cream parlors. The choices may be few: lemon; coffee (great sandwiched into a brioche for breakfast); gelso (white mulberries and almond milk, but all are wonderful.  The almond milk classic is my particular favorite. 

Last year a friendly bartender (who sadly was not there this summer) suggested we try different combinations - gelso and almond, coffee and almond, etc. But, it was not until the third to last night of our vacation when he greeted us with cinnamon sticks and a hand grater and, before our eyes, created something we call “cinnamon summer” -- thin layers of almond milk ice separated by freshly grated cinnamon dust.  Summer may be over, but I can still taste that cinnamon summer.   

Cinnamon summer

Cinnamon is one of those spices that bring back memories. Especially, freshly ground cinnamon. This evening I made a quick stop at the Caffè Polar, the tiny bookshop café, with a free hotspot (still not very common in provincial Italy) here in L’Aquila, the city in the Apennine mountains where I live. My goal was a short cappuccino and a newspaper break, but that change, as I stepped up to the bar to order and caught a whiff of that, oh so familiar spice. The young woman behind the bar was busy grating cinnamon over a small glass cup of espresso.  As she tops it up with panna (dense cream), I ask how she would do espresso and cinnamon cold. It is a warm day, after all. “I would make a

Caffè Shakerato,” is her response. 

Caffè shakerato is the hedonistic Italian version of iced espresso. It consists of two shots of espresso straight from the machine, ice and sugar.  The ingredients are mixed in a cocktail shaker then poured into a flute or cocktail glass. In Milan, and a few other parts of northern Italy, Rebarbaro, (a semisweet bitter), or Biancosarti, (a vanilla-based liquor) are added before shaking.   It is great with a touch of freshly ground cinnamon. 

What I like about the  best spices is how they can turn on your memories that play on all of your senses.   I’ll tell you how cinnamon transformed evening strolls on the Sicilian island of Panarea last summer, in the next installment