This week the SSFC is focused on fruit. Though I don't grow any, my CSA supplied me with loads of berries & stone fruit. Last night I dug into the fridge and found 3 pounds of plums, yellow and purple. The hot July temps have us craving icy treats, so I made a plum granita!
The hardest part of making a fruit granita is finding a dish that is fairly long & shallow, and fits into your freezer. The rest was a snap!
Ingredients: - 3 pounds of plums - 1 lime zested & juiced - 1 tsp vanilla bean paste - 1/2 cup of sugar - 3/4 cup of water
Method: - fill a stock pot with water, and the plums. Bring it up to a simmer & look to see if the skin of fruit is peeling back. Remove the fruit from the water and cool in a collender. - while you wait for the fruit to cool, simmer the water, sugar, lime zest & lime juice together until the sugar dissolves. Turn off the heat and add the vanilla. - when cool enough, peel the skin from the plums and drop the flesh into a food processor. Make sure the skin & stone go into the compost, not the food processor. - blitz the plums & pour in the lime simple syrup.
- find a dish that is shallow & long. And make sure it fits into your freezer. - using a mesh sieve, pour the fruit into the dish. I returned the pulp to the food processor and blitzed it again & repeated the straining technique. Compost ormosh on whatever gets stuck in the sieve. You want the granita to be clear. - put the dish in the freezer and with a fork, stir and scrape every 25/30 minutes until its mostly crystallized. Depending on your freezer & the depth of the dish this could take up to 120 minutes.
Voila! Plum granita! This zesty treat was exactly what I needed after a weekend of hard work in the garden. I don't know what the deal with crabgrass is, but it's running rampant in my garden. If you're interested in a creamy composition, mix it with some vanilla ice cream - dreamy! You can use almost any fruit to make a granita. Just remember to have the right dish & a sieve on hand.
